


the hounds of hades

by braithwaites



Series: the hounds of hades [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Almost Kiss, Blood and Violence, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Love, Multiple Pairings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Novelization, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV Original Female Character, POV Third Person, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-08-30 03:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 93,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16757212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braithwaites/pseuds/braithwaites
Summary: Madelaine Vallières was the daughter of a chemist who left a trail of blood from Opelousas to Valentine. Charlotte Glanville was bought and paid for by a gambler and left widowed six months after she arrived in Saint Denis. Juniper Scott watched a bounty hunter burn her ranch to the ground with her father's money in his pocket.Anger burns inside of their bellies, and Dutch van der Linde is of a mind to let those flames loose.





	1. Madelaine I.

Gossip spread through the Saints Hotel in Valentine like feathers through a chicken coop, especially when the hens were spooked.

Madelaine Vallières stretched across the mattress, pressing one of her knees down onto the bed in order to tuck the sheet beneath the end. Above her, she heard the quiet swish of flat feet on the floorboards. They weren’t allowed to wear heeled shoes to work, not when there were treasured customers sleeping all around them. The whispers were louder than the incessant back and forth through the hallways.

There were new men in town, the whispers said. Or, at least, that’s what she could assume from what she heard in passing. Bits and pieces of murmured words weren’t difficult to sew into something that made sense.

Lifting one of the pillows, Madelaine busied herself with fluffing the feathers inside.

There weren’t just new men in town. They were different from the usual.

Valentine had enough traffic running through it that they saw plenty of business. The Saints Hotel never hurt for new customers, and those living in the vicinity liked the girls enough that they’d pay the money for a bath on occasion, even if they didn’t really have the means.

Madelaine hadn’t caught a glimpse of the first one who came through, but she had her ear bent five times by the girls she worked with the night before. Each of them had another good thing to say about his rich voice and his rough, but gentle nature. The one who scrubbed him down — an older woman called Viola — said his name was Arthur, and that they weren’t staying too far out of town for the time being.

“He certainly was a handsome thing,” Viola continued, one of her aching feet kicked up on the low rim of a washing basin. She fanned at the dark, glistening skin of her chest. “What a fine jaw. And his eyes? Oh, Lord.”

She set the pillow down and reached for the second. The bedding had been warmed by the sun pouring in through the tall window, and through the glass, she could see a few of the stores across the way, as well as the men, women, and horses who traveled back and forth through the path that cut through the middle of Valentine like a belt.

There weren’t many handsome men in those parts.

They weren’t to her taste, at least, having grown up deep in the South where men dressed fine and spent most of their time indoors to keep out of the humidity. When she thought of a good-looking man, the picture of an old friend of her family’s came to mind — a man, tall as anything, with a thick black beard shot through with gray and a laugh smoky as whiskey.

The owner of the Saints wasn’t bad on the eyes. He had a gentle nature to him, but she liked a bit of fire, as well.

Maybe she was just too picky.

“Not the time,” Madelaine muttered to herself with a laugh like she couldn’t quite believe where her mind was going. “You got beds to make, and dirty men to wash. Think about that, why don’t you?”

Dropping the pillow down where it was meant to lay, she smoothed her hands over the gunmetal gray of her skirt and straightened her back. Even after only a few hours of work, she could feel herself tremble with the effort it took to keep herself upright. There were only a few other girls who worked there who suffered as she did, all thanks to the weight they were carrying up front.

A nasty curse was what her mama left to her — a weak back and breasts the size of damned melons — but it was better to think about that than the handsome cowboys and likely outlaws who were living outside of Valentine.

Her work kept her fed, though there wasn’t much in the way of variety and she missed the food she grew up with something horrible. Her work kept a roof over her head, though it wasn’t much of one and leaked when the rains got heavy. Her work kept her happily busy, though there was the occasional mislaid hand that left her spitting mad.

Madelaine looked from the perfectly folded sheets to the emptied commode to the landscape painting that hung on the wall. Everything seemed to be in place for the next person who’d pass through. There was even a cluster of buttercups in a green-glass vase on the chest of drawers, their petals as pretty as the bedding.

The Saints Hotel wasn’t the finest hotel in all of America, but the people who visited weren’t looking for that or willing to pay those prices. It looked nice enough in Madelaine’s eyes, however.

Picking up the basket she’d dropped at the foot of the bed, the one full of folded sheets and pillow cases and candles meant to freshen any otherwise stale-smelling rooms, she left with every intention of moving on to the next unoccupied chamber to do the same. Work wasn’t the same every day, but setting up recently vacated rooms was one of the easiest tasks on offer. It was better than doing the washing or cleaning out the commodes, better than giving baths and washing hair.

It was lonely work, but the hotel was never quiet enough for that feeling of being alone to sneak up on her more than once or twice a week.

Just as soon as Madelaine opened the door, she found herself face-to-face with one of the other girls who worked with her.

Evelyn was a tiny little thing, with dark hair that fell in straight sheets on either side of her heart-shaped face. “We need another set of hands,” she said, “and everybody else is already indisposed.”

Madelaine lifted the basket in her arms. “What do you think this is?”

Evelyn set her own basket on the floor before taking Madelaine’s without issue, setting it on top of her own before lifting them both up. She was strong for how small she was. They all were. “It’s mine now, Maddie. Now, are you gonna listen?”

An edge of impatience clung to every word. Madelaine knew better than to push her.

“Yes, Evelyn. I’m gonna to listen.”

“Mister Hughes needs you upstairs in the third bathing room.” The directions were short and to the point. She wanted more details in order to be better prepared, but she’d already demanded too much of Evelyn’s time and wasted too much of her own. Apparently. “The gentleman paid the extra fifty cents for the oil, too, so be sure to bring that in.”

The oil was a clouded glass bottle of bath oil brought in from London, and it was the most expensive thing in the hotel save for the furnishings. Mister Hughes could only afford one scent at a time. The one they kept in a locked cabinet on the ground floor smelled of bergamot and lily of the valley.

Madelaine thumbed over the tiny key hanging from her belt by a lilac-colored ribbon and nodded. She hated leaving her work half-finished, but sending Evelyn into a fury that might just as well bring the hotel down around them wasn’t the better option. Any fool would know that.

“Thank you for taking up the rest of the rooms,” she offered with a smile. That seemed to diffuse a little of the young woman’s tense nature. “I’ll be up with him in a moment.”

They parted ways there. Evelyn tucked into one of the nearby rooms while Madelaine made her way down to the end of the hallway and the closet space where they kept the things that might’ve inspired a burglary if they were kept up front by the desk. After unlocking the cabinet where Mister Hughes kept his oldest and strongest liquors beside the bath oil from Penhalgion's, she removed one of the smaller, unmarked bottles of the oil and returned the lock to its place.

A quick glance into the mirror that sat on the cabinet confirmed that she looked just fine, that her hair was in place and her lips were soft and pink. Little more than that mattered in her line of work. Men rarely noticed the state of her skin so much as they noticed other things, other things that were also carefully pinned away behind her corset and high-necked blouse.

It wasn’t often that men paid the extra money to take the oil in their water. Most just paid for the water and the brushing. Fewer still liked to talk, but those were her favorite. There was nothing more painfully boring than scrubbing down a man who didn’t even talk to you, not even opening his mouth to thank you. She hoped the man behind the door would prove to be as charming as his tastes were expensive.

As she made her way through the straight hallways of the hotel, Madelaine brushed shoulders with a handful of familiar men and the even more numerous women who worked alongside her. Only when she saw Viola did she reach out to stop one of them. Her arms were reddened from hot water halfway up to her elbows, but it was the tired way she smiled that told Madelaine more about the bath she’d just finished giving.

“Could you tell Harvey to bring up a few buckets of hot water?” she asked, unable to keep the pleading note from her voice. “The third bathing room, upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, darlin’, I don’t mind.”

Madelaine gave her wrist a gentle squeeze. “Thank you,” she said, the bottle of oil warming in her other palm. “Thank you, thank you.”

The older woman’s laugh was sweet and goading. She freed herself from Madelaine’s grip before tossing that same hand at and past her in the direction of the stairwell that led up to the second floor. “Go on, pretty girl. You got a gentleman waiting. Get.”

Madelaine lifted her skirts with one hand as she took the stairs, quick but not two at a time. If she took a tumble, it would be bad enough to break an arm or leg. Shattering one of Mister Hughes’s bottles of bath oil would be taken out of her pay… for about six months. Nevermind that the creaking and heavy footfalls would wake everyone who didn’t sleep like the dead.

She mounted the last stair and let her skirt fall from her hand before tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. There was a few yards between her and the door that led to the third bathing room, just enough of a distance to catch her breath before entering.

There was nothing pretty about huffing and puffing on someone who paid good money to get washed.

Madelaine took quiet, even steps as she inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Every time she forced herself to deepen her breaths, her ribs ached a little. She patted a hand down over the fabric of her blouse, fingertips sliding over the rigid lines of featherbone.

By the time she reached the door, Madelaine had more than caught her breath. Her knuckled rapped against the door — a precaution to make sure the gentleman was in a comfortable state before she entered. There was no response, so a careful assumption was made. She twisted the doorknob and pushed the heavy wooden door open.

Every bathing room looked the same, give or take a few details that were hardly noticeable to anyone who didn’t spend their lives in them. There was a large slipper tub in the very center, half-wood and half-tin, with a copper tray stretched across it. Behind the bathtub was a privacy screen covered in an almost fancy cream and brown brocade pattern. There was a hanger for clothes the customer didn’t need cleaned and a washing basin made of polished pine wood, complete with a small, standing mirror and a complete shaving kit.

A man stood at the basin in the middle of washing his face. He was stripped down to his waist, baring a muscular back that was covered in dark beauty marks and moles and the occasional freckle. His skin was the color of cream where it wasn’t bruised or scarred or darkened from sun damage.

“Good afternoon,” Madelaine greeted him, turning to shut the door without so much as doing a double take. “The water will be up in a moment, sir.”

He made a sound of recognition before dragging both of his damp hands through his hair. It was black as soot and hung down near the nape of his neck, almost to his shoulders. There was a softness to the way the ends feathered out against his skin.

Madelaine couldn’t help but notice how clean he was, like he’d already been seen to.

When he turned around, she finally did that double take. The man standing in front of her didn’t look like anyone in Valentine. Not even the occasional well-to-do traveler didn’t look quite so fine. There was something damn near regal about him as he stood there, thick-waisted and nonchalant, staring right at her as she stared at him.

“And what would your name be, miss?”

Madelaine wet her lips, both hands curling around the bottle of bath oil. “Madelaine,” she said.

“Mad-uh-lain,” he repeated, nodding as he wiped his damp face with a hand towel. Rather than just tossing it aside, he folded the square of fabric neatly before setting it on the table that stood beside the tub. “You pronounce it differently than I’m familiar with — Mad-uh-line?”

The air in the room was still warm and slightly humid from the last person who came through needing a bath, but the road carried too much of a smell to open one of the windows.

“I’m not from around here,” she offered him, moving around the foot of the tub to set the bath oil beside the lamp that flickered on that same table. While she was there, she turned the burner down lower. The golden light dimmed a little, flickering against the clouded glass. “I come from Louisiana originally.”

“Ah, yes. That’s the accent.”

Madelaine shot him a small smile. “May I have your name, too?”

The man stilled for a moment, as if some inner conflict took him, but it only took a moment for the victor to rise to the surface. The corner of his broad mouth tucked upward in a smile of his own. “You may call me Dutch, Miss Madelaine.”

Most people struggled with her name, or just gave up and called her Madeline.

He didn’t.

Just as Madelaine opened her mouth to ask him about himself, there was a knock at the door. She rushed over and opened it, knowing Harvey would be carrying two heavy buckets of hot water for the bath. And there he was, huffing and puffing twice as hard as she had, all splotchy red cheeks and windblown brown hair.

“Thank you, Harvey.”

She took the buckets one by one, carrying them with both hands over to the bath and emptying them with some effort. Harvey gave her a flustered smile and nodded to Dutch before leaving them be. She lifted a key from the belt at her waist and locked the door behind him.

Steam curled up off of the water, even in a room that was already so warm. It was the perfect temperature for the oil, though she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t scald himself by getting in right then. She dealt with overeager costumers more often than she cared to, but Dutch didn’t seem like that sort of man.

Maybe he’d surprise her.

“How long have you been in these parts?” Madelaine asked as she removed the stopper from the unmarked bottle of oil. She held it out to him, a precaution to make sure he even cared for the stuff. Watching as he sniffed the contents, her teeth snagged at her bottom lip to keep from smiling. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

“That might very well be because we haven’t been around.” The response didn’t carry any details, but there was enough for her to pick up on things. He was new in town, and he wasn’t alone. Most men traveled by themselves if they were passing through on business. They didn’t use ‘we,’ either, which was what gave Madelaine the idea that he might be one of those outlaws staying outside of Valentine. “We’ve only been in the area for a week or so. Valentine is a nice enough town.”

Before she could respond, he nodded at the bottle of bath oil. “Quality stuff. I’m impressed.”

Madelaine chuckled. “It’ll leave your skin feeling like silk and smelling like a buncha oranges,” she told him as she dropped a decent amount of the oil into the water. Once the bottle was stoppered and kept where no stray limb might upturn it, she sat down upon the rim of the tub and began swirling her hand around in the water in order to get all of it mixed. “Do you like oranges, Mr. Dutch?”

“Please, just Dutch.”

When she lifted her head in his direction, Dutch was working open the heavy-looking silver buckle of his belt, revealing even more of the dense, black hair that trailed down from his navel. There wasn’t a day of working that she could remember when she hadn’t seen three or four naked men, sometimes more. But there was something about Dutch that separated him from the men who paid the extra fifty cents for a lady to bathe them.

He didn’t ask for privacy, but she gave it to him when her cheeks swam suddenly with warmth, forcing her to duck her head.

“For what it’s worth, I do enjoy the occasional orange,” Dutch told her. Then, from the sound of it, he removed one boot and then another, setting them down beside the basin with a quiet jangle of spurs. “There’s all that ‘apple a day’ nonsense, when you’re better off chewing on citrus to keep yourself from falling to scurvy.”

With his boots off, all that was left was his trousers and underthings. Madelaine swirled her forefinger through the water as she waited for him to finish up. The water was smooth and nearly hot enough to make her draw her hand back.

“Would you like me to put in the soap flakes, too? For bubbles?” she asked without glancing back at him.

“No bubbles, Miss Madelaine.” Her ears perked up, listening to the ruffle of him folding his trousers and the quiet thump of his feet on the floorboards as he removed his britches. “I don’t much care for them.”

From what Viola said the night before, her customer had been a sweet-natured man. He made quiet conversation, thanked her for her work, and smiled when she planted a motherly kiss on the top of his head. Dutch seemed to be the same sort of man. The outlaws living outside of Valentine didn’t seem much like the blood-thirsty marauders she’d been warned about so often.

Dutch was almost genteel. It was a nice change from the people she tended to most days.

Madelaine stood as Dutch took his first step into the water, waiting until he submerged himself up to the waist to twist around and begin her work. Where the water sloshed against his skin, the creamy color was left a bright pink. If the bath was too hot for him, he made no complaints. He didn’t hop right out of the water, either, as men with thinner skin were likely to do, leaving the floorboards all wet and dripping down to the bathing room below.

“How is the temperature?” she asked. If prompted, she could add some tepid water in to even things out a bit. “Feel nice?”

“The streams of New Hanover are still ice cold, Miss Madelaine.” Dutch tipped his head back, resting the crown of it against the rim of the bath. He sank a ways down into the water, one hand on his knee and the other covering his manhood. “Water this hot is a heavenly blessing.”

He shut his eyes. Only then did Madelaine notice how long and thick his eyelashes were. Like a cow’s, really.

“We’ve got two types of soap on offer.” Madelaine reached for the wooden box that sat beside the oil lamp and flipped open its cover revealing two bars of differing sizes. One was much smaller than the other, having been more frequently chosen during the past few weeks. “One’s cinnamon, the other’s honey.”

Dutch cracked an eye open to get a look at the box of soap. The smaller of them was a pale golden color, almost the same shade as Madelaine’s hair. Yellower still was the other bar. It smelled strongly of cinnamon, though there were sharp, spicy notes in both of them.

“I’ll take the cinnamon,” he murmured without lifting his hand from the water to point at the larger of the two bars.

Madelaine busied herself after that, rubbing the bar of soap into a lather in her dampened hands and smoothing her palms up over Dutch’s broad shoulders. His skin was already soft, and the bath oil would only leave him feeling softer. She knew that from experience. Felt like she was wearing gloves for days after someone requested the stuff.

With every tender press of her hands, she felt Dutch shift under her touch. He sighed more than he talked, not that he sat in the sort of uncomfortable silence she had to deal with sometimes. If he was traveling on horseback, there was no wonder that he was sore.

She dragged her fingers down one of his arms and massaged the cinnamon soap deep into his tense muscles. And God, he was tense. There wasn’t an inch of him that didn’t tremble before giving way to her hands.

“How do you find Valentine?” Madelaine found herself asking to fill the room’s quiet. Outside in the hallway, there was always someone talking or walking back and forth or snoring so loud you’d think the roof would cave in. It never did, but sometimes, the china that Mister Hughes kept in reception shook under a particularly firm footfall. “Do y’all plan on staying long?”

Again, she was met with the lingering hush of confrontation. Dutch worked his jaw, wet his lips, then told her: “We’ll stay in these parts for as long as we can, but I don’t think it’ll be forever.”

His chest rose and fell with a chuckle.

“We aren’t usually that lucky.”

Madelaine was glad that his willingness to reveal small truths was so strong. She hated it when men turned on her or snapped for her to shut up when she was just asking them simple questions. She could deal with someone asking her to focus on their bath, but when they raised their voice, something inside of her shriveled up.

She stood, shifting onto the rim of the bath again. The band of tin around the bathtub was thick enough to not be much of a pain, but she was used to balancing on it anyway. Taking his hand in both of hers, she began to wash over his callused palms and nails. They were relatively clean, just like the rest of him, but there was nothing wrong with being thorough. That’s what he paid for, after all.

“You said you were from Louisiana,” Dutch murmured. His voice sank back in his throat, sounding sticky as honey. “Have you ever been down to Saint Denis?”

Madelaine snorted before she could stop herself; the sound was full of bile. She curled her long, skinny fingers around his in surprise, turning to apologize only to see that his face was scrunched up in a laugh.

“Oh, you are from Louisiana, aren’t you?” His laugh softened into a chuckle. “That was the reaction of a native.”

Madelaine dunked Dutch’s hand into the water to wash away the suds that lingered between his fingers. Only once the skin was clear did she give it back to him, opening her hands for the other. “May I speak frankly?”

Dutch removed his hand from his upper thigh and settled it into her open, waiting palms.

“Miss Madelaine, I would like nothing more.”

“Saint Denis is a cesspit, and this is coming from a woman who’s worked in Valentine for near five years.” She lathered up another bit of soap before palming the sweet-smelling suds over his skin. It was already softer than before thanks to the bath oil. He smelled of oranges and cinnamon and a little bit of honey. There was no doubt in her mind that some woman back at his camp would take a bite out of him once he got back, looking all fresh and smelling so handsome. “I’d take horse manure up to my ankles over having to wash some couillon Frenchman who thinks he’s better than me.”

Again, Dutch laughed, but that time, it was even louder. He was bound to wake someone, but she didn’t mind, even if Mister Hughes would bluster at her later for encouraging such behavior in a patron.

Madelaine liked his laugh.

It wasn’t condescending. It didn’t make her feel as if she was being made fun of or mocked for her commentary. That much was new to her, and she found herself wanting to crack him up again.

Letting his other hand off in the water, Madelaine stood from the rim of the tub.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to wash, or would you’d rather handle it?” she asked him, leaning over his shoulder with a water-warm hand poised just there. Water dripped from her fingertips, trailing over the curves of his chest.

Most men preferred washing their more delicate parts on their own. The Saints Hotel wasn’t a brothel, after all, and if it was, they wouldn’t offer a tug for a measly fifty cents a go. The women of the hotel were there to care for those who passed through, to scrub their backs and make conversation and give people who longed for the simple, comforting touch of another what they wanted.

Dutch proved to be one of those men. Once she handed him a towel and the cinnamon soap, Madelaine turned her attention to his clothing.

“Would you like these laundered?” she asked over her shoulder. “Mister Hughes charges twenty-five cents for it, but considering all that you’ve paid today, that’ll likely cover it.”

Dutch made a thoughtful noise as he shifted in the bath. She heard him moving the soap from palm to palm and smiled to herself when she heard him take a deep breath of the scent. He’d be back. She could tell in the slow way he savored everything that he’d be back before long. That was a good feeling.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said once he set the soap down on the copper tray, hands sinking down into the water. “I would like that very much. You wouldn’t have something to save my clothes from the dust on the road, would you?”

Madelaine felt a tickle of laughter in her throat, but settled for a smile, one he could likely hear in her voice. “Sorry, sir, but we don’t have anything like that on offer. You might could find a poncho at the general store.”

“A poncho?” Dutch hummed around a chuckle. “I do not believe I could pull one off, Miss Madelaine.”

Once she had his clothes folded into a neat, careful little pile, Madelaine brought them to her chest. Dutch was still washing himself as she passed by, glancing up from his work to meet her eyes.

“I’ll go and bring these down so someone’ll get started on washing them. Do you mind?”

Dutch lifted a hand. Every part of him that had been submerged into the bath was pink as a piglet, and even the parts of him that hadn’t touched the hot water were slowly warming up, filling with a similar color. There was little of him that hadn’t been touched by a flush — not his hairy chest or his throat or his cheeks. “I do not mind, no.”

With the lock undone and the door shut, Madelaine took a moment to stand in the narrow hallway that led between half a dozen rooms on the second floor. A rug stretched underfoot, making her footfalls even more quiet as she hurried down to the stairwell and then down the stairs themselves.

She was so distracted by the idea of getting back, in fact, that she nearly ran into Harvey, who was carting another pair of buckets down to one of the bathing rooms on the first floor. The surprise pulled a gasp out of her, but didn’t upturn the buckets. She was grateful for that much.

After giving Harvey a flurry of apologies, Madelaine rushed past him and down the stone stairwell at the back of the hotel to the small building on the far side of the yard where everyone did their washing. It was painted the same color as the Saints, but was a little shabbier when it came to upkeep. No one really bothered with upkeep when it was nothing but someplace to wash clothes and bedding.

Two massive wooden buckets sat in the middle of the room. One was full of bright yellow sheets while the other was blessedly unoccupied. On the far side of the hutch stood the stove that was used for warming water, as well as a chest full of soaps and sodas for washing. Perched on one of the four stools surrounding the buckets was one of the younger girls who worked there, her blue-black hair done up in a tighter bun than what was in style.

Ngoc didn’t stop stirring the sheets through the soap even when she looked up to see who entered. Upon noticing Madelaine, she managed a tiny smile.

She wasn’t alone. Viola was there, resting in between shifts, and Iris leaned against one of the cabinets, looking bored rather than tired. It wasn’t difficult to pick out who she’d ask to wash and dry Dutch’s things.

“Iris,” Madelaine called, getting the woman’s attention without issue. Keeping it would be the problem. “Can you do me a favor?”

Iris was a short young woman with even shorter hair and an often insolent expression. Mister Hughes had very nearly fired her more times than Madelaine could remember, but he never quite got to that point. He was a bit of a pushover, after all, and Iris could be a little frightening.

“Maybe,” Iris said, though she didn’t move. “Why can’t you do it?”

Viola rapped her on the shoulder with her bony knuckles. “Don’t be a pill, girl. Everyone’s busy ‘cept you. You might as well earn your keep for once.”

Madelaine set the pile of clothes on one of the stools and shot Ngoc a small smile of her own, ducking out of the hutch right as Iris launched into a tirade about the ungrateful Mister Hughes. She followed the planks of wood that made a trail across the muddy yard, skirts rucked up higher than was decent to avoid getting them dirty.

By the time she reached Dutch, he was finished his bathing. Someone had come by in the time that she’d been gone and offered him a drink, something colored like honey from the locked cabinet on the first floor.

He swirled the drink around in the glass and looked up at her from beneath heavy lids. Never before had she seen a man look so comfortable.

“How long should it be?” he asked her as she locked busied herself with locking the door. He took a short sip from his drink and sucked in a breath when it burned him right back. “I was planning on meeting up with someone in an hour or two.”

Madelaine considered loads of clothes and bedding that Ngoc and Iris and the others had to contend with. Then, she thought of Dutch and his ‘hour or two.’

“You and Mister Hughes are about the same size,” she said, moving over to the basin and pulling out the drawer to reveal another, milder bar of soap. “I could go down and borrow one of his suits for you until your clothes are ready.”

Dutch didn’t respond immediately. He never seemed to be quick on the draw when it came to his words, as if he was weighing them before introducing them to his tongue.

“That sounds fine, Miss Madelaine,” he said after an extended bit of quiet. “Will they be finished by nightfall, at least?”

They would be finished long before nightfall — cleaned and dried and pressed in about four hours, as long as they didn’t get even busier in the meantime. She picked up the bar from the basin and turned towards him again, pausing for a moment to watch as he ran his fingers through his hair before setting down his glass on the copper tray.

Dutch was almost too good-looking in her eyes. No man could be that handsome and have a good heart. It just wasn’t fair to the men around him.

“They’ll be finished by nightfall,” she assured him as she returned to the rim of the tub, dunking the bar of soap into the water.

The tub managed to hold in most of the heat, but after a bath, it was more warm than hot. He didn’t seem to mind, though. Didn’t ask for the bathtub to be refilled. Didn’t tell her to hurry. He just sat there and watched her with steady brown eyes, and she let herself focus on the suds.

“Thank you for this, Miss Madelaine. It has been a long, long time since I last indulged in something that felt as fine as this.” Dutch leaned forward as she bid him, offering his hair to her for washing. “I wager I’ll be back before long.”

“Madelaine,” she said softly, her words as light as the orange-scented bubbles that clung to her fingers. “Just Madelaine.”

She could hear the smile in his laugh. She could hear the whiskey in it, too.


	2. Juniper I.

Smithfield’s couldn’t have looked more like a typical saloon.

There was a piano pushed up against one of the wallpapered walls and a bull’s skull hanging right near the entrance. A few tables were scattered around the area, same as a few chairs. Their wood wasn’t polished or finished in any way, just cut and smoothed over to avoid any nasty splinters. The biggest, brightest, shiniest thing in the whole place was the bar itself, which could probably serve upwards of a dozen people without a brawl breaking out over elbows.

Juniper half-expected to see some dark-eyed stranger with his boots kicked up on one of the rough chairs, hat pulled down over his eyes and jaw working around a mouthful of tobacco. Or some girl with rouge up to her ears and a skirt twice as broad as she was hitched over her thigh.

But those were all stories, assumptions made by people who’d never traveled as far west as Valentine, and she’d lived in these parts for long enough to know better.

The batwing doors swung shut behind her as she entered.

Two men at the bar glanced over in her direction — one she recognized, but the other was a stranger. A barber at the back looked up from his straight razor, desperate for custom, only to look away when he realized she wouldn’t be sitting in his chair. Men wore their beards long in Valentine, and most women just trimmed their own hair. She did, at least. The ragged ends proved that.

Poor guy.

The man tending the bar looked up from his work and raised a hand to her in greeting. She gave him a nod that was pure courtesy as she made her way over to the two men who had only recently been served considering the amount of drink in their glasses. John Marston couldn’t keep a full glass for more than five minutes, and even that was pushing it.

But he was distracted from his whiskey by whatever he was discussing with the young man in front of him. The well-dressed young man. The one who was gesturing more than talking.

The look on John’s face said he wasn’t listening.

“I hear the stew here’s better than Pearson’s,” Juniper said, leaning against the bar on John’s opposite side. He didn’t bother turning towards her, but she knew he was listening. “Man at Worths couldn’t say enough good things about it. Kept ramblin’ ‘bout the quality of the meat.”

With the way the bartender’s ears flared up a pretty red color, she wasn’t sure what he’d meant by that. Not anymore, at least.

John chuckled low in his throat, lifting his glass and swirling its amber-colored contents around in a neat cyclone.

“I’d say the drinks aren’t bad, neither, but…”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Stranger or not, apologizing for interrupting the consumption of liquor meant he might be worth their time. As a diversion, if nothing else. “It’s only that I have a certain interest in scars. I have on, you see. Right here!”

He tugged at his collar, revealing a nasty, knotted scar that curled down from his jaw to the nape of his neck. Whatever gave him that could have very well killed him. He was lucky. Or, maybe, he’d escaped fate by the skin of his teeth.

“I was telling this man about the wolves,” John murmured. He lifted his glass to his mouth and took a healthy mouthful of whiskey. His cheeks trembled when he swallowed. “About how I almost got mauled and all.”

“Almost?” Juniper gave a snort of a laugh and leaned even more heavily against the bar. “You got mauled.”

She remembered the fuss that became of the camp when Arthur and Javier brought John back to what amounted to home in Colter. Half of them thought he was for sure going to catch a fever and die, but the cleverer folks knew he’d make it if the wounds were cared for.

Juniper didn’t have any way to help out with John. She couldn’t fix him up, didn’t know how to clean him up, and was bad at keeping him company when he was already miserable. All she could do was focus on the pelts of those wolves that damn near killed one of her best friends. The fur wasn’t even that good, but she still cleaned them proper. Sold them for a few dollars once they were able to move on.

“Yeah, well…” John took another swallow of whiskey. “Where’s Arthur?”

“Worths. He’s still puttin’ in our order,” Juniper said absently as she looked over the bottles lining the wall. She wanted something, but didn’t like buying liquor from strangers. Her thirst would have to wait. Unless… “John, look here.”

He angled himself towards her, an unkempt brow raised in question. The atmosphere of the saloon had him too disarmed to keep her from snatching up his glass of whiskey and draining a finger out of it. It was strong stuff, with a burn like a kick to the nose. She gritted her teeth for a moment before letting go of a sigh that was almost blissful.

“Thanks.”

“Well, it’s no problem at all, Miss Juniper,” John drawled, setting his glass on the bar with a clunk and gesturing for the bartender to fill it again. “I wasn’t planning on drinking all of that anyway.”

Juniper rolled her eyes and kicked the toe of her boot gently against the floor.

The man standing to John’s left watched them both, rapt with attention. From what she could tell, he was just passing through Valentine. Probably from somewhere on the East Coast. His suit was dusty around the legs, but otherwise clean. The beard he wore was tightly trimmed, too. And men wore their beards long in Valentine.

“You’ve got a thing for scars, do you?” she asked him without making any kind of direct eye contact. “I’ve got one I could show you.”

“Come on, June…”

The stranger stood up a little straighter, his interest piqued. “Oh! Yes, ma’am, but only if you’re of a mind to let me see.”

Juniper pulled herself up onto her feet properly, moving away from the bar so he could get a better look at her as she tugged her coat off of her left shoulder. Her shirt was loose enough at the neck for her to do the same, baring the scarred skin of her upper arm. The skin was heavily freckled, but between the dusty brown dots were lines of bright red that feathered off in every direction starting at her collarbone and disappearing down her back and the bunched up sleeve of her jacket.

She’d gotten a lot of different reactions from it in the past. Reverend Swanson swore she’d outlive them all, that a woman who’d gotten struck by lightning and survived was meant to last through anything. Jack thought it was strange, and when she went without a coat, he’d follow the reddened lines with his tiny fingertips.

Strangers weren’t often so kind. Most told her that she shouldn’t have lived past that. They told her she was unnatural.

To the man’s credit, all he did was gasp at first. Then, he reached out and adjusted her coat back onto her shoulder. Which was enough to show her that he was definitely not from Valentine.

“How on God’s green Earth did you get a scar like that, Miss June?”

“Juniper,” she corrected him, not unkindly. “And I didn’t get it ‘cause of God. Zeus himself did this to me. Threw a bolt’a lightning down when I was at my lowest. Some kinda recompense for my lifestyle, I suppose.”

John tipped his glass back to get the last swallow of whiskey. When he spoke, his voice ran thin as a windblown sheet. “I never heard anything that more soundly said, ‘Fuck you and your strong-willed nature.’”

“Didn’t work.” Juniper pursed her lips, smiling.

Both John and the stranger laughed at that, though the sounds were mightily different. Marston laughed like he had gravel rattling around in his guts, but the stranger’s laugh was quieter and more than a little nervous. Tinny as a bell. It was a true ‘hah hah… hah’ laugh if she’d ever heard one.

“So, what’s your name?” she asked, tapping her fingers one by one against the smooth, dark wood of the bar. “We’re at a disadvantage here.”

“Harris,” said Mister Harris. “Abraham Harris.”

John watched the bartender take his glass. Juniper kept her eyes on him, too, rather than the recently introduced man beside them both. He dunked the glass into a basin full of water before wiping it clean with a long white rag and returning it to its brothers high on a shelf.

“And what brings you to Valentine, Mister Harris?”

“I’m traveling for business,” he said, sounding so genuine that neither Juniper nor John had it in their hearts to doubt him. That was a city boy, and there was no mistaking him for anything else. “Valentine is a nice enough town, isn’t it? Are you locals?”

John straightened his back out, though he still leaned both hands against the bar. There was a shade of impatience in how he stood there, one of his sun-damaged hands tapping out a beat against the bar.

“No, we’re just passing through. Same as you.” He glanced in Juniper’s direction. “Dutch was supposed to be here by now. Arthur, too.”

Juniper cast a slow look around the bar. It was quiet, even in the afternoon. If the saloon was quiet, there had to be nothing of note going on in the town itself. Otherwise, the place would’ve been swimming in gossip, and they’d be dodging fists already.

“You think there’s trouble, sir?” She pitched her voice up a little, making herself sound as helpless as she could. John was already laughing and shaking his head by the time she finished her first question. “Maybe you and I should go and help? They’re twenty minutes late, so they must be dead.”

For the first time in a while, John was too amused with her to punch back.

Abraham Harris piped up in the wake of his lack of response. He not-so-subtly mirrored John’s stance and leaned over the bartop to catch her eyes, then catch John’s. “If you’re meant to meet someone here, I could give you your privacy!”

Both Juniper and John responded, but not in unison.

His reply was a quiet, “Please,” while Juniper said, “Oh, it’s no trouble.”

But the city boy was more keen on listening to Mister Marston, so he nodded and bid his farewells and finished his drink. The whiskey blanched him of all color before filling up his cheeks with an uneven red. Then, he was gone.

From what she could tell, his spirits were still high. That was nice enough.

Juniper and John stood in companionable silence for some time. He didn’t have any more questions about Dutch or Arthur, and she didn’t have anymore answers. That was the best thing about being friends with a man like John Marston. He only talked overmuch when he was agitated.

The bartender stepped out from behind the bar and reached for a broom. Whatever dirt clung to the floorboards wasn’t there from through traffic as much was there because the doors didn’t fully shut, letting in all manner of cold air and dirt from the road. Still, he swept everything up with the quiet swish of broom bristles against the floor.

There was a squeak on the other side of the room, which only turned out to be the barber sitting in his chair and giving it a slow, teetering spin. Never before had she seen a man so thoroughly bored with his life.

And in that lull, Arthur Morgan pushed through the swinging saloon doors.

The first words out of his mouth were predictable as anything. “Where’s Dutch?”

“Good to see you, too, Arthur,” John groused at him, but there was a smile on his broad, skinny mouth. “You wanna drink?”

Arthur lifted his hat off of his head with one hand and smoothed his straw blond hair down over his head with the other. His footfalls landed right in the path the bartender took with his broom, leaving prints of dirt on the floor. Juniper saw a flicker of frustration on the man’s face before he leaned his broom against a chair and returned to his place behind the bar.

“No, I don’t want no drink,” Arthur said just as the man stepped up in front of him. “What I want is for you to tell me where he is.”

He glanced away from John’s face and looked at Juniper instead. She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me nothin’. All I knew was I had to get gun oil.”

John’s shoulders hitched forward, curling over his hands where they lay flat against the bar’s top. He hesitated before lifting his fingers for another drink of the same. Two and a half glasses of whiskey was a lot for him, but he wasn’t alone.

It’d be easy enough to pile John into the carriage, anyhow.

“Dutch went to the Saints,” he said. “Said he’d be back in an hour and some.”

That was all the answer either of them needed. If Dutch went to the Saints, it was for a bath. He didn’t have any reason to rent a room, and his taste for the finer things often led him in the direction of such establishments. You can’t feel too fancy when you’re dipping your ass in a stream to get clean most of the time.

Arthur let go of a sharp sigh before leaning against the bar beside John, elbows poised on the wood. “Figures he’d make us wait.”

“I’ve been waiting for you, too, you know.”

“Nobody asked you,” Arthur said as he waved the bartender over. “Beer, please.”

The bartender stood before Arthur, bottle of whiskey in-hand, and asked, “Ale or lager?” He looked tired, but the day was still ahead of everyone there. What they made of that day lay squarely on Dutch’s shoulders.

“Lager.”

Leaning back away from the bartop, John let go of a sigh long enough to follow the curve of his arched back. His hair fell away from his face, revealing his still-healing wounds. There was three days of growth on his jaw and dark circles under his eyes. No one was sleeping well at Horseshoe Overlook, not yet. Nobody except the Reverend, but his peaceful rest was aided by generous amounts of booze.

They were all laying in wait, a dozen coiled rattlers. Every breath they took sounded like the same shake of a tail; it was the warning of people backed up against a wall.

Dutch was the worst of them all when it came to sleeping. The lamp burned in his tent at almost all hours, no matter how much Miss O’Shea fussed and complained. He haunted that wood, a single light burning in the darkness like an all-seeing eye.

The bartender set Arthur’s beer down in front of him and then disappeared back behind the stairwell, likely to get things started for dinner. It was getting to be that hour, after all, and the saloon just smelled of dirt and alcohol. Outside, the through traffic was picking up as people left their businesses behind for the night, filling the air with the sounds of conversation and the nickering of passing horses.

Before long, other scents joined in, and Juniper knew her assumptions had been correct. Searing meat had always been one of her favorite smells, no matter what seasonings you put on it. She took a deep breath and let herself slowly relax, even as two men entered the bar, flanked on one side by a single, well-dressed lady.

She looked all three of them up and down. The two men wore similar clothes — fancy, but worn in places — and one had a hat. The one with a hat wore his beard trimmed close to his jaw, while the other one had only stubble.

The woman’s dress was fine as fine could be, decorated with falls of lace at her elbows and a high collar that was pinned through with a brooch of a flying bird set with what looked to be turquoise. She didn’t look entirely happy with the situation, either, which was what got her attention.

Arthur and John hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t even taken up their drinks, like they were waiting for Dutch to show up before they took another sip.

Juniper pushed away from the bar and headed over in their direction. The men were big, so they didn’t pay her much mind. She was a tiny thing, even shorter than the lady in her pretty dress, and narrow as a switch. It was the woman who took notice of her, which wasn’t any sort of surprise.

After traveling so long with the Van der Linde gang, she knew how to spot a woman in distress. She knew how to work these things out, too.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Juniper began, rocking back onto one of her heels as they passed her by. Catching up to them was easy, seeing as they were shaping up to be big lumbering fools. “Barkeep’s in the back making up dinner.”

The man with the beard looked at her, one of his brows cocked high on his forehead. “Why’re you botherin’ us?”

“Just wanting to help you out,” she said smoothly. “You might be in for a wait.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Arthur turn his back on his lager in favor of watching Juniper with a look she was more-than-familiar with. That slight narrowing of Arthur Morgan’s pretty blue eyes meant, ‘What the hell are you doing, woman?’

“Don’t care,” the other man spat. He had a slightly leaner look about him. One of those men who you just know carries a shank.

Juniper gave a shrug before circling back to John and Arthur at the bar. Her eyes didn’t leave the woman for a second, no matter where she went in the room. The group eventually settled down at one of the empty tables. There were two chairs, leaving one of them to stand. He leaned against the wall beside the window, glancing every now and then through the dirty glass.

“What’re you doing?” Arthur whispered. He gave the saloon his back and picked up his lager, throwing back a good quarter of it before setting the glass back down to wipe at his upper lip. “I don’t remember Dutch giving us orders to start shit with anyone who comes in.”

“To be fair, you are getting old and forgetful.”

Arthur wasn’t the kind of man who’d smack a woman, but he sure as hell was willing to smack John Marston upside his thick skull.

The impact wasn’t anything too loud, so John laughed it off easily enough, ducking his head down, trying not to make it obvious to Arthur that it smarted. All the while, Juniper kept her eyes level on the woman. She kept her hands in her lap and her eyes focused on the grain of the table. The men at the table waited. Everyone was just waiting. The slow crawl of time was miserable.

“I’m going talk to her.” Juniper pushed away from the bar only to have the sleeve of her jacket caught up by John’s hand. “Don’t.”

“Could say the same to you.”

“There’s something wrong, John.” Her voice took on an edge, one that said she wasn’t moving. She was short, but she was stubborn as a mule. Everyone knew better than to tell her she shouldn’t or couldn’t do something. “I’m going see.”

John let go just as Juniper gave her arm a tug. The momentum nearly made her stumble.

“Ass,” she grumbled, situating her jacket back onto her shoulders before making off in the direction of the three strangers. John was a bastard, but funnily enough, she liked that about him. He was never cruel for the sake of it unless the person deserved no less.

Once Juniper arrived at the table, she planted both hands unceremoniously onto its surface. She stood across from the woman, whose big brown eyes snapped up to hers. Pinched pupils with a circle of bright white around them. There was a moment where Juniper swore she saw her mouth a word or two, but she wasn’t any good at reading lips.

“I have a question for you, gentlemen.”

The bearded man leaned forward in his chair. His shift towards her left their faces closer together than she would’ve liked. Juniper could taste chewing tobacco in the air she breathed.

He leaned in close and looked her right in her eyes and said, “Fuck off.”

“It’s just a simple question,” Juniper offered. Not grinding her teeth into a fine powder and spitting a wad of the stuff into his eye took everything she had. She didn’t know she had that kind of self-control until that exact moment. “All I need’s a simple answer.”

For a moment, she thought the man would either lash out at her or ignore her. Just for a moment, though.

“Fine.” He glanced in the direction of his friend, who still stood a few feet away, glancing furtively out of the window. “What’s your question?”

“What’s that woman’s name?”

Juniper saw the woman open her mouth, but she stopped her with a gesture. The man leaned against the wall looked over, making the briefest eye contact with the other before tightening one of his fists. Surprisingly enough, it was the big, ugly one who balked at the question.

He didn’t answer her because answering her question would’ve sent her back to the bar. All he asked her was, “What’s it matter to you?”

Juniper looked over to the woman. In the past few moments, she had paled considerably save for the pin pricks of color high on her cheeks. She stared up at her with a mixture of terror and awe.

That expression was what unsheathed the knife riding on Juniper’s belt and drove it between the thug’s forefinger and thumb, right in the juiciest part of his hand.

Men wore their beards long in Valentine.

Behind her, she heard Arthur groan a weary, “Oh, God damnit, girl,” but she heard him crack a handful of knuckles, too.

Arthur and John’s willingness to fight by her side wasn’t a worry of hers. They were loyal almost to a fault when it came to the people in the gang, even the awful ones. If someone jumped off a moving train, everyone else would jump right alongside them and tend to the wounds later. That was their life. It wasn’t complicated, but it wasn’t easy, either.

The thug bellowed rather than screamed in pain, lashing out at Juniper with one of his meaty fists. She ducked under the blow and gave the butt of her blade a good smack, driving it deeper into the unfinished wood.

Rather than reaching for one of the pistols he wore, the man by the window rushed forward, snatching the woman up around her waist.

The way the woman fought answered another question for Juniper. It also distracted her from the man’s second swing, which clocked her in the jaw hard enough to make her see stars. She grunted, hurling herself out of his reach.

It would bruise something nasty, but she didn’t care.

“Make sure that squirrelly fucker doesn’t get away!”

John lunged in the direction of the one dragging the woman away, while Arthur’s attention wheeled around to the one who was bleeding profusely from his hand. There was no grabbing for a gun, not with an injured right.

Juniper rubbed at her jaw.

While the man hadn’t screamed — not when she stabbed him or when he worked the blade out of the tabletop — the woman’s voice rose shrill enough to shatter in her throat. She screamed and clawed at the sleeve of the man’s jacket, working her legs back and forth as if she was trying to keep her head above water.

No one made it to the front doors of the saloon. Not because of Juniper, not because of Arthur or John. But because the swinging doors parted and let in a freshly scrubbed Dutch van der Linde. Dressed head to toe in a suit that wasn’t his, hair damp and cheeks bathwater-warm.

It took Dutch all of a moment to assess the situation, even shorter than that to unholster one of his pistols and slam it into the back of the man’s skull.

He dropped like a sack of rice, and so did the lady he was carrying.

She scrambled back, away from the man’s unconscious body and away from Dutch, looking between them as if she wasn’t sure what to do.

“Come now,” he said. His words were as even and measured as they always were. As he spoke, he approached her one step at a time, hands held out in front of him. He looked harmless, but everyone knew otherwise. Everyone except her. “I have no intention of harming you, miss. Only saving you. Now, what’s your name?”

She blinked, wetting her lips.

“Charlotte Glanville.”

English, proper London English.

“I would love to hear you tell me about these men, Miss Charlotte,” Dutch said, extending one of his hands in order to help her up onto her feet. When she gave him one of her own, he did just that. “After my friend here brings them both to the sheriff, of course. Rowdy bunch.”

Rowdy bunch.

Juniper laughed and worked her tongue around her teeth, tasting iron.

“It’ll be no problem, Dutch,” Arthur said. He leaned forward, looking into the face of the man he held in a grapple. “You gonna come easy? Or do you want to keep fighting? It’s up to you, partner.”

The man sneered, but didn’t say anything. He stayed silent until Arthur had nearly dragged him out of the door.

“Bronte’ll find you.”

Arthur shoved him out of the batwing doors before he could say another word, but what he’d gotten out seemed to have spooked the woman more than the fighting had. She stepped closer to Dutch, as if she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to protect her.

Maybe he would. Juniper had seen him take people on for less.

“Don’t worry yourself about that, miss.” Dutch guided her over to the table without blood spilled over its surface, and she went willingly, her hands fretting and eyes stuck on the door. “I don’t much care for kidnappers. Neither does my friend there. Don’t you, June?”

Juniper wiped the bloody blade off on her trousers before sheathing it and making her way over.

“I most certainly do not, Dutch.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Juniper watched as the barber stood from where he’d been cowering behind his chair. Whether or not the owner of the establishment was even going to charge them for damages, she wasn’t sure. He hadn’t come out from the back to witness the commotion.

Likely as anything, he was just used to the fighting.

Dutch pulled out a chair for Charlotte. She took it, her thanks quietly spoken. Her limbs arranged themselves neatly, like a girl who was used to making herself smaller.

Now that she didn’t look so damn scared, Juniper could see that she was a beauty from her upturned nose to her plump cheeks.

Whatever this Bronte wanted with her, Juniper wagered that she wouldn’t like that, either.

“So,” Dutch said as he settled down into the chair opposite her, hands laced together on top of the table. “About these men who kidnapped you.”

Charlotte took a deep breath, and then, she told them everything.


	3. Charlotte I.

Dutch van der Linde seemed like an honest enough man.

But of late and through no uncertain terms, Charlotte learned not to trust honest-looking men. Men who dressed well, men who combed their hair, men who spoke and carried themselves like gentlemen — they were snakes. All of them.

Gratitude nestled itself in her chest. She wanted to dust it off, to shoo it away, but she knew herself well enough to know that it wouldn’t budge unless she repaid Dutch and his what they were owed. Juniper, the wild-eyed redhead who took that first step in rescuing her, deserved compensation. Whether they would take it or not, she wasn’t convinced either way. Two of them looked keen enough to rob her themselves, not that she had much to offer them.

The older gentlemen had a tired, but gentle way about him. There were frayed strings along the hem of his trousers and the fabric of his shirt was threadbare in places, a little faded. He could use some money to get himself something new to wear.

Then, there was Dutch, who looked rich as Croesus compared to the others. She had no idea what she could give him to compensate him for all he’d done.

The thugs would be paid once they delivered her to Saint Denis, not before. They carried enough money to pay for a train ride from Valentine to the city where Angelo Bronte was waiting for her, liquor for the trip, and a handful of dollars to spend on the way.

Charlotte had even less than that, given you didn’t count her mother’s brooch pinned on the high collar of her blouse. She couldn’t part with that.

Reaching up, she curled her fingers around the brooch as she stared across at Dutch van der Linde, as if one of them was already preparing to steal it right from her grasp. The smooth corners pressed into the softness of her palm, and the silver stuck out at her like tiny, open mouths, inlaid with pretty drops of turquoise.

“I did nothing to him,” Charlotte continued, her words crackling on her tongue. Still, she did not cry. That was a small victory. “I don’t owe him money. I haven’t wronged any of his men, or any of his many businesses.”

She swallowed hard, stamping down the fear that curdled in her stomach.

“He had no reason to track me down when I was only attempting to make a life for myself.”

Dutch leaned back in his chair, one hand on the table and the other on his knee. “What a truly heart-breaking story, Miss Charlotte,” he said. Scraps of genuine sympathy clung to his words. They were plastered on rather haphazardly. “I am glad we crossed paths when we did.”

She hummed her agreement, fingers curling tighter around her brooch. The pain of clutching onto it was a flicker at the back of her mind.

“This husband of yours…” Juniper said, leaning forward until the ragged ends dragged over the surface of the table. “Sounds like he got you into this mess. That’s all gamblers are good for, if they don’t have any sense.”

Charlotte sighed. “Perhaps.”

Forcing her hand away from her throat, she straightened her back as much as she could with her aching muscles. The brute dropped her, certainly, but more than that, she’d gotten enough of a scare to coil her up like a spring. There was no doubt in her mind that she would ache for days after. Her voice was no better from all the screaming. Whether it would still by hers to use by morning would be decided in her sleep.

If she ever allowed herself a moment with her eyes closed after everything.

“This Bronte feller sounds like he’ll track her down just about anywhere,” Juniper said. Her attention shifted to Dutch, who stared up at her thoughtfully, but Charlotte didn’t take her eyes off of the woman speaking. “She won’t be safe in this town or any other.”

“And if allowed her to come with us tonight, she very well might lead them directly to our family.”

Juniper worked her lips together, jaw tight. Under her freckles and under the dirt, the tops of her cheeks were red. She glanced in Charlotte’s direction once or twice before finally making one last attempt at convincing him.

“If we keep killing ‘em, he’ll stop sending ‘em.”

Dutch let go of a long sigh, like a disappointed father. Charlotte knew that sigh better than most.

“If Bronte — whoever this man is — has enough pull in Saint Denis to send his men all over creation to find this one woman for seemingly petty reasons,” he explained, “then it stands to reason that he may have the influence to bring what few freedoms we have left to ruin.”

Whatever hope buoyed inside of her sank as she watched him, watched the determined set of his brow, watched as he made his decision and as it became almost immovable as stone.

Reaching up to her throat, Charlotte unpinned the brooch that sat there. She set it down onto the table, right in front of him. The winding silverwork glittered in the lamplight. And while the stones did not glitter merrily in quite the same way, they were beautiful.

Convincing.

“His reasons aren’t as petty as you think. I know the location of a safe.” She struggled around the words. Her throat felt as if it’d been mauled, and unpinning that brooch was as good as letting the wound bleed. “North of Saint Denis. That’s where my husband kept everything he didn’t need — valuables, jewelry, bonds. My dowry is stowed there, as well as what he stole from Bronte.”

Interest softened Dutch’s expression.

Men had been carving beautiful things from stone for thousands of years.

Dutch leaned farther back in his chair. His chest was too broad for his paisley suit; the fabric pulled at his shoulders and at the buttons cinched around his middle. The colors didn’t suit him, either.

“Miss Charlotte, you are far more adept at negotiations than I was led to believe.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” she admitted somewhat painfully, her eyes glued to the brooch on the table. Dutch did not reach for it. Juniper did not reach for it, either. It sat there on the table and drew no one’s attention but her own. “When I left Saint Denis, I…”

Her voice cracked. When she lifted her fingers to her throat to soothe the ache, she could feel her pulse right beneath her skin. Her heart was hammering a quicker beat than she was used to, and she couldn’t calm it.

“When I left Saint Denis, I thought I would rather die than give up that money.” Charlotte ducked her head. The voices of her father, of her husband, of Angelo Bronte himself told her to stop. They cried out simultaneously, their words twanging and discordant. She silenced them with a sharp breath and pinched brows and a look of steely resolve. “But I can earn all of that back, in the end, as long as I am alive.”

Dutch glanced around at the saloon’s patrons. Some of them looked over in their direction, curious in the least invasive way someone could be curious, but he didn’t seem to care much for that.

But it was nearing eight, and there weren’t many places to be alone in a saloon. Privacy came at a premium.

“Saint Denis is a ways yet,” Dutch said to Juniper, to John and Arthur. They stood nearby but didn’t pry into the conversation. She understood why they might want to keep their noses out of Dutch’s business. “I had no intention of traveling so far south.”

He thumbed over the roundest part of his chin.

“What did your husband steal from Angelo Bronte?”

Charlotte swallowed hard, even if it felt like choking down sandpaper. She reached out and picked up her brooch, holding it in her palm rather than returning it to her high collar. She didn’t want to tell him. She wanted to open her mouth and have a beautiful lie spill out.

“I don’t know,” she told him. “Archie never told me.”

Dutch shifted forward on his seat, as if he was moving to stand. The stab of fear that gave her was what forced her long-fingered hand out in his direction, not far enough to grab him but close.

He stared down at her hand for a moment that lingered on long after it began, bordered on either side by the silence they shared.

The tune some stranger was playing on the piano was a jaunty thing she didn’t recognize, but it followed the rapid pulse of her heart almost to the note. She struggled against the urge to pull her hand back, to apologize. Those weren’t the words that found her.

She couldn’t lie outright, but she could bluff.

“Whatever it was is worth tracking a widow across Lemoyne and well into New Hanover.” The tremble in her hand went still, and Dutch planted his own flat on the table, peering across at her with the expectation of hearing more. “There’s something worth killing for in that safe, and I’m the only person alive who knows where it is anymore.”

For the longest time, Juniper stayed quiet. She stood there, arms folded over her chest, listening rather than watching. Even then, she didn’t open her mouth. It was the older man — Arthur — who intervened.

“Come on, Dutch,” he said, his voice a trickle of sense that Charlotte was grateful for. “You’re makin’ the poor girl squirm like a worm on a hook. Hasn’t she been through enough today?”

Dutch didn’t even look up at him when he spoke. His stare was focused on a single point — on Charlotte. “I have my reasons to be cautious.”

“You’ve taken worse people for less,” Arthur said. His words felt like a gentle push with both hands, like coaxing someone into taking that first step out into the winter cold. Whether or not Dutch would budge remained to be seen. “Useless people for less, too.”

“How much do you believe resides is that safe of your husband’s?”

Charlotte sat back in her chair and let her hand fall to her lap to join the other one, her fist still curled around the sharp wings of the bird. She shut her eyes, forcing herself to remember the money that never made it into their accounts, the jewelry that she was only allowed to wear once or twice before it disappeared. She tried to remember the value of her belongings and of what her father gave to him those few months back in return for enough money to pay off his debts.

One by one, piece by piece, she calculated everything she could recall, and when she opened her eyes, she stared across at Dutch with pleading brown eyes.

“It has to be at least three thousand dollars,” Charlotte whispered. “I don’t know how long he’s had the safe or all that he put in it before we were married, though, so it could very well be thousands more besides.”

Surprise ran through Dutch van der Linde and the members of his gang. They stood there, listening to her with a mixture of awe and avarice.

Is that enough? she wondered. Is everything Archer Lee ever kept secret enough to buy myself freedom from Angelo Bronte?

“Prove yourself useful to me and mine, and you’re more than welcome to join us,” Dutch said with a surfacing cheer that didn’t do much to ease her concerns. He moved to stand again, and this time, she didn’t stop him. “I cannot promise it will be comfortable, but you won’t be running from this Bronte gentleman.”

There was something in the way he phrased that that tampered with the surge of hope she kept expecting.

You won’t be running from Angelo Bronte, but you’ll be running from everyone else.

Charlotte nodded and lifted herself up from her chair with as much delicacy as she could muster. The muscles in her legs trembled, threatening to give out, but she steeled herself. Dutch expected something from her. Strength of character, perhaps. Or strength of person. Either way, fainting from exhaustion on the floor of the saloon wouldn’t be the most auspicious beginning to her time with the gang.

“Arthur, since you were so kind as to speak up for the woman, she’ll be riding with you.” Dutch smoothed back the tails of his coat. The movement was sharp and fringed with discomfort. “I’ll meet the four of you outside the town once I have my things.”

No one asked any questions. They listened to him and nodded and did as they were told. Charlotte had never been around a man like that, not in all of her life.

Arthur stepped up beside Charlotte. He was a tall man, but there wasn’t a thing about him that struck her as intimidating. Capable and likely dangerous, but she didn’t feel fear when he stood beside her.

“Do you have much experience with horses, miss?”

“A little.” Charlotte pinned the brooch to her collar and tried to ignore the sharp pangs that radiated through her hand. Her palm was sore from gripping onto it, the skin torn in the fleshiest part of her hand from its beak. “I had a horse for riding around Saint Denis, but I didn’t have much time with her.”

“Amaranth has a steady gait,” Arthur told her once Dutch had passed the swinging doors. “He’s big, but he’s careful. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Leaving Smithfield’s felt as if God himself had reached down from the clouds and lifted the weight of the world from her shoulders, even if she still had trouble conquering the few wooden stairs on her weak legs. She squinted at the ground and lifted up handfuls of her skirt to keep the scalloped ends from dragging in the mud.

So distracted was she by keeping herself relatively clean that she didn’t notice when Arthur unhitched his horse.

The enormous creature’s face loomed in front of hers when Charlotte glanced up, giving her another start that nearly drove her to the ground. On a second look, she saw how pretty the horse was with its long strawberry blond mane and a coat of red and silver that looked like stippling across canvas.

Amaranth’s ears pricked forward, which calmed her somewhat. Still, she looked to Arthur for advice, her brows pinched upward in question.

“Go ahead,” he murmured as he ran a heavy hand through Amaranth’s long mane. The horse lifted his massive head and shook out his long hair, almost as if he was showing off. “He’s just about the friendliest horse you’ll meet. ‘Specially out of our lot.”

Charlotte moved around to stand beside Amaranth. When she ran her fingers along his neck, she found that he was just as soft as he looked, even dusty from the road. The power that lay beneath his skin in the shape of corded muscle was just as impressive. Her worries were sated. At least, for a time.

Arthur scooted up on his saddle, clearly making as much room for Charlotte as he could. Given the state and size of her, she was worried she’d never climb onto the creature’s back. There weren’t many men who could pick her up without snapping something in their backs. Archie tried once, and it left him bedridden and miserable for days.

“Do you suppose someone nearby has a ladder?” she asked him, head tipped to the side as she tried not to sound as unsure as she felt.

“A ladder?” Arthur laughed under his breath and gave his head a shake. “Come here, girl.”

Watching him lean over and reach for where she stood, Charlotte went still in a moment of panic. If Arthur fell off of his horse or strained something, it would be awfully embarrassing. Everyone in the gang would know her only as the plump woman who nearly broke Arthur’s back in two. She couldn’t deal with that.

His hands tucked under her arms, and the panic she felt rang outward from her chest. Her words were lost to it, leaving her to only make a short, concerned sound as she clutched onto Arthur’s shoulders.

He lifted her as if she was willowy. Panic became something else entirely — a flustered delight that felt out of place considering all that had happened since that morning.

She didn’t have time to think on it overmuch, however, as the moment she was settled and as secure as she ever would be, Arthur set Amaranth off at a comfortable trot.

Charlotte wound her arms around Arthur’s waist and watched as the town she hoped to call her new home moved by at a steady pace. There wasn’t much to be said about Valentine. There were only a dozen or so buildings and only two or three times as many people at any given time of day. Metropolitan, Valentine was not, but upon taking the train up north, Charlotte entertained a few fantasies about the life she might have led there.

Getting attached to those fleeting, watercolor dreams had been ridiculous, but she could hardly help herself. Her heart was broken by her father in London. Her trust, shattered in Saint Dennis.

What was left for her out west, except for a simple life?

Not that she thought even for a moment that life with the Van der Linde gang would be simple. Life in Valentine, maybe, but with a bunch of outlaws, she was only safe as long as the money she promised was ahead of them. The moment the combination was cracked, she feared that her usefulness would come to a sudden and tragic end.

Charlotte grabbed onto her own wrist and held tight.

The three of them slowed. Juniper rode a sprightly Arabian, while John’s horse was almost as big as Amaranth. They made for a strange-looking bunch, which only became more apparent when they were joined by Dutch on the prettiest horse Charlotte had ever seen.

Dutch had changed in the short while since she’d last seen him. What he wore suited him, unlike that overwhelming mess he donned before. He was a man who wore blacks and reds well, and he sat upon the back of his horse like a king rather than an outlaw.

As he passed to the front of the group, Charlotte caught a flush in his cheeks. Either the ride to meet them had been invigorating, or he’d brushed elbows with someone of interest.

“Careful with her, Arthur,” Dutch warned as he took his place up front, speaking to him without looking back over his shoulder. “We don’t want her to fall.”

“No, we don’t.”

Charlotte clutched onto her wrist and held firm, her thighs tensing as they began to move again. She hoped she wouldn’t fall. She hoped she wouldn’t drag Arthur down into the dirt path, either.

Unable to focus on anything else when Amaranth picked up speed, she pressed her face into the back of Arthur’s coat and squeezed her eyes shut.

What she couldn’t see, she could smell. They passed a farm that filled her nose with a fresh, barnyard scent, and they passed a sprawling field of wildflowers. She breathed in time with the pound of Amaranth’s hooves. Every time she inhaled, she caught another picture of what might be spreading out all around them.

Every time the horse landed through his stride, Charlotte bounced, and every time Charlotte bounced, she felt a pain shoot up her back. She wasn’t meant to cling to someone on the back of a warhorse. She was meant for carriages, for leisurely rides through town.

As she sat there, clinging to Arthur, praying to God that she would stay on the horse, the others conversed. Charlotte didn’t pay them much mind, but she did her best to memorize the names that passed between them — Hosea, Grimshaw, Edwin, Pearson. Juniper mentioned a Bill, while John said something about a Victor.

Life was a dime novel, she realized in between Valentine and the clearing they called Horseshoe Overlook.

Life wasn’t a winding tale told by George Eliot, not for her, not anymore.

Fate passed between the hands of men even still — William Glanville, Archer Lee, Angelo Bronte, Dutch van der Linde. And what was she worth? More than a dime, perhaps, but there was no one there to show her that she was worth more than hundreds or thousands of dollars, that she wasn’t a price to be paid.

Charlotte worked at the ache in her jaw and fought back the tears that rose in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to leave Arthur tear-stained.

She hadn’t shed a single tear by the time they reached the camp. Someone shouted out at them a warning, “Who is it?” from deep in the foliage. It was Dutch who confirmed that it was them, and the man said nothing else.

“We’re here, Miss Charlotte,” Arthur said as Amaranth plodded up a worn path to the camp. She could see the warm light of a few, well-kept fires, as well as a few covered wagons and even more tents. Everywhere she looked, there were either people or horses. Some of the men and women wore smiles. Some japed with each other, while some sat alone, isolated and quiet. There were no gunshots. There was no blood. “I’ll let you down once I hitch my horse.”

She opened her mouth to thank him, but nothing came out save a quiet rasp.

After an hour of not using her voice during the ride, it had deserted her completely.

Charlotte gave his shoulder a pat rather than forcing the issue. When he glanced over his shoulder to see if she was alright, she rubbed a hand over her throat. That got the point across well enough.

Once they arrived at one of the free hitching posts, Arthur slid down from his saddle and reached up to help her to the same. The moment her boots hit the ground, her knees nearly buckled again. She was lucky that Arthur hadn’t quite let go of her yet. He stared down at her with the a worried, almost fatherly expression.

“We need to get you a chair,” he muttered to himself before looking around to see if there was anyone nearby.

John was already gone, and Juniper was trailing behind Dutch, waving her hands about something Charlotte couldn’t hear. There was only a few of them within earshot — a beautiful woman with golden ringlets set around her face and a man with a bow on his back. One of them couldn’t hold her up even if she wanted to, while the other looked sturdy enough for the job.

“Charles!”

They hadn’t mentioned a Charles on the road.

He moved where he was called and without complaint. His hair was longer than any she’d ever seen on a man, as straight as a board and black as coal. The woman had been beautiful, but so was he.

“This here is Miss Charlotte,” Arthur told him, indicating the woman standing in front of him with a nod of his head. Charlotte watched as Charles looked her over, from the top of her head to her muddy shoes. “She’s had a hell of a day, so if you could help her into camp, that’d be much appreciated.”

Charlotte didn’t care for being passed between hands, but she was grateful for the help. Grateful enough to manage a small smile when Charles curled a supportive arm around her waist.

“Hello.”

His voice was low. She felt it more than heard it from where she stood, half-leaned against him.

While she couldn’t find it in herself to speak to Arthur, it seemed wrong not to say something to the man beside her, whether in introduction or in apology. She tipped her head up to look at him. There was only an inch or two difference between them.

“Thank you,” she rasped. The sound was so horrible that she scrunched her face. When she spoke again, her voice was even worse. It crackled uselessly, unable to find a sound that wasn’t that of a squeaking door. “Oh, good heavens.”

Charlotte laughed, though the sound was mostly lost somewhere between where it began and her teeth. She choked out a quiet, “Awful,” and took her first step towards the chair Arthur had pulled out for her.

Though she ducked her head in embarrassment, she caught a sliver of a smile on Charles’s face before she did.

They both helped her down onto the chair, though it was Arthur who lingered for a while to make sure she was comfortable. Not that he said so exactly. She could tell from the way he looked at the chair and her dress and the general state of her. He didn’t budge until she gave him a pat on his arm and told him, “It’s okay.”

And then, she was alone, perched on a splintering wooden chair that had seen more rain in its life than she had in hers.

Charlotte stared into the camp, hands folded neatly in her lap, and thought of the safe. She thought of the old plantation house where it was buried. She thought of what lay inside and what it had purchased for her, in a way.

Freedom was a strange thing.

To her, freedom was being able to afford canvas and pigments. Freedom was a soft pillow and the warmth of a blanket. Freedom was the roll of dice, the churning musculature of a horse, the death of fear.

Charlotte gulped down a shallow breath. She hoped she would find a place with the Van der Linde gang.

Hope was the pretty hat that sat upon freedom’s head.

After everything, Charlotte was surprised she could still wear it.


	4. Madelaine II.

By the end of June, Madelaine knew most of the Van der Linde gang by face or name.

Their leader, Dutch, was the Saints Hotel’s most frequent customer, though he never stayed behind for more than a bath. Arthur Morgan rented out a room every now and then, and so did a charming fellow by the name of Javier. She heard stories about some of the others. They were always funny little things, snippets of a life she couldn’t dream of having.

To Madelaine, having a soft place to rest her head after long hours of hard work was what kept her on her feet and kept her positive.

The concept of running all the time just made her tired.

Still, she enjoyed hearing about them all. Arthur in particular had a lot to say about a man called John Marston, who seemed more of a little brother to him than a fellow gang member. There was talk of snow up to their knees, of an unlucky horse and a pack of wolves, of the poor man’s mauled face. She listened to Arthur talk about the concerned fury John’s lady brandished at him and the soft-spoken doctor who cared for his plentiful wounds when the yelling was done. She loved to read, but there was something about hearing an account from someone who’d been there that left her breathless.

“Do you deal with that sorta thing all the time?” Madelaine asked him once.

Arthur just looked at her for a moment, his blue eyes worn so soft, before chuckling. “Well, that’s our life. Happens every day.”

That made a certain kind of sense.

Tucking a bundle of sunshine yellow bedding over one of her arms, Madelaine hurried up the stairwell to one of the few unoccupied rooms with that and a basket of cleaning supplies in tow. Summers were always busy in Valentine, what with all the cattle coming through and the weather growing milder, but in the few years since she began working for Mister Hughes, she’d never seen so many people passing through.

There always seemed to be a bed that needed making or a head that needed scrubbing. Everyone took their turn at different jobs, but only a few of them were allowed to give baths. Evelyn was too prickly; she didn’t have the manner that was needed for such work, which left Madelaine’s hands pruned more often than not. She enjoyed whatever time she had to herself in the bedrooms.

The huge chests that stood at the foot of each bed left the rooms smelling of pine. Heaters kept the space warm well into the morning, even after the fires were extinguished to be cleaned. There was nothing uncomfortable about her surroundings, no matter how busy things were.

As she was tucking into one of the empty rooms, she heard a clatter of footsteps up the stairwell behind her.

Madelaine turned on a dime, holding the sheets at her back and putting on her most pleasant expression for the patrons. One of them just looked like any other man — dark hair and a mustache with a flushed and almost weasely demeanor. The other was a woman with golden ringlets piled around a pretty face and a delighted shine in her eyes. Delighted and mischievous. She knew that look.

When the young woman passed, their eyes met. Something familiar reached out to her, like something on the wind you couldn’t quite get a taste for or put a name to. It was there, but she couldn’t quite reach out far enough to get a hold on anything.

Madelaine turned once the patrons were crowded against one of the bedroom doors, stepping into the empty room she was meant to clean, thinking of the woman’s face and the color of her hair and that feeling of familiarity that followed under her feet like a shadow. She’d never seen her before, but maybe she knew someone similar? Maybe she heard about her through other folks in Valentine?

Or, maybe she’d seen her at the saloon once or twice.

She didn’t lock the door when she made sure to shut it; there was nothing worse than trying to unlock a door with your arms full of soiled bedding. No one made that mistake more than once.

The last occupant hadn’t made a horrible mess of things, at least. The commode hadn’t been used, just the piss pot, and he hadn’t wrecked the bedding. From the look of things, he hadn’t even slept there overnight. That didn’t mean she could just smooth out the sheets and be on her way. It meant she didn’t have to scrub and didn’t have to call up Mister Hughes to have the mattress emptied and stuffed again.

As she began to strip the bed, Madelaine heard a giggle and something akin to a squeal.

Even in the coldest months, there wasn’t a lack of that happening in the Saints Hotel. Between men and women, men and men, and even the occasional pair of female sweethearts — there was no shortage of petting going on behind closed doors when someone wasn’t along. She didn’t know what it was about a hotel that got everyone so fired up, but she didn’t complain. She didn’t have any reason to.

Another laugh was followed up with a thump that damn near rattled the framed drawing of a harebell off of the wall.

There was no making out particular words, but she didn’t need to understand what was being said to know what was happening. The look that Madelaine caught on the woman’s face wasn’t one that spoke of how interested she was in her suitor. No, she was more interested in the platinum chain that dangled from his pocket and the fine leather of his hat.

At the very most, she was only interested in how well he could fuck.

Madelaine pulled the bedsheets together into the center of the bed, making a bundle out of the bright yellow fabric before setting the new set of sheets down beside it. The room needed a little dusting, needed a new flower for the vase, and the window panes needed to be wiped down, but other than that, there wasn’t much that needed doing. Considering the state of the last room she’d been given, this was heavensent.

No more than ten minutes passed before she was halfway done with her cleaning and the thumping and laughing had turned into rushed moans. The woman’s giggling deepened to something throatier. There wasn’t much talking happening, either. Not anymore.

Tucking the rag she used to dust the mantle through her belt, Madelaine took a moment to sit down on the unmade bed. A twinge of pain ran up her back, branching out near her shoulder like a bolt of lightning. She rubbed both of her hands over the muscles. The pressure helped, even if she could barely feel it through the layers of her clothes. The shirtwaist she wore was thin enough, but her corset was old and thick and not at all well-made.

Her head sunk forward as she let go of a slow breath, drawing it out for as long as she could without gasping.

She sucked in another and straightened her back, no doubt looking like a chicken with her arms pinned back and her head held high. The image pulled a laugh out of her, but as soon as the sound slipped past her teeth, there was a crash in the room beside her.

The hair at the back of her neck stood on end, and as her arms sank to her sides, she listened. She strained to hear the next sound that would come, but there was nothing for a long while. Nothing but the squeak of carriages down on the road, the nickering of horses, the ebb and flow of conversation.

Until…

A voice rose above it all, rich and masculine and furious, and Madelaine snapped up onto her feet almost too quickly. She clutched onto the bed’s frame to steady herself before launching forward, every part of her work forgotten.

The moment she pushed through the door, the man shouted again. That time, there was a crash rather than a thump, and when the woman yelled back at him, she didn’t sound entirely helpless. But that didn’t mean anything. Misplaced bravery in the face of another person’s anger wasn’t uncommon, in her experience, and it often got someone hurt or killed.

Madelaine didn’t want to clean blood-soaked floorboards. She didn’t want to talk to the sheriff any more than she had to, either.

Stopping in a flurry of skirts, she reached for the doorknob with a hand that was shakier than she realized. The tendons at the back of her hand tensed and released, fingers curling and twitching where they floated above the tarnished copper. Her heart hammered faster and faster, everything in her heart telling her to open the door, but her hand only landed upon the knob when she heard the woman’s bellow turn into a panicked scream.

Madelaine leaned into the door, desperately twisting at and shaking the doorknob to no avail.

Locked.

Of course the door was locked.

“Unlock this door!” she yelled, yanking the knob to the right, then to the left. It didn’t even budge. Any thought spared toward the other patrons was left at her feet; no one in that hotel mattered save for the woman on the other side of the door. “You betta unlock this door right now!”

The woman hollered again, but the sound of her voice was cut off with a hollow thump that turned Madelaine’s stomach.

“Please!”

Madelaine shoved her shoulder into the door. The doorknob held, but the wood itself shifted just a little. A searing pain curled over her shoulder, as if she’d leaned into a bonfire, and she bit down on her bottom lip to keep from whining about it.

Futility didn’t hit her often. She was just trying to get by, working day in and day out, making just enough money from washing and cleaning and sewing to keep herself fed. There was nothing sad about that, nothing worth crying over. But sometimes, she missed living in a world where she didn’t have to fight down a door to save a woman from getting herself killed. Sometimes, she wanted nothing more than to turn back time and be a little girl again, in dewy Louisiana, with a mother, a father, and a life outside of her work.

She leaned back, preparing herself for the burst of pain that would come from trying to force the door open again, but before she could make contact, she heard someone charging up the stairwell. Their heavy footsteps caught her attention; it was the walk of someone who understood what was happening.

Madelaine turned toward the sound only to see Arthur Morgan mount that last step and make it onto the landing.

The sight of him pushed something into place — a cheeky young woman with golden curls, freckles over her nose and chin, and a laugh that was as loud as it was sharp. Arthur told Madelaine about her once, and she featured in more than a few of his stories. Javier mentioned her, too, though he never shared many details about the others. Just their names.

Karen.

“She’s in here,” Madelaine told him, stepping back to give the much larger man the room he needed to muscle into the room and keep the worst from happening. Rubbing at her shoulder, she watched as he did just that. Arthur planted one foot on the ground and kicked with the other, splintering the frame of the door on impact. “I think she’s alright, but I couldn’t know for sure! Should I run and get the sheriff?”

Arthur looked back at her only once. His brow laid heavily over his eyes to match the harsh set of his jaw. When he spoke, he was short and to the point, as if each word was a waste of his breath. “Don’t need no sheriff.”

With another kick of his boot, shards of wood flew, and the door swung open.

The man stood in the center of the room, stripped down to long underwear. His cheeks were painted the same red as his knuckles, the sight of which left Madelaine blanched of color herself. The room was in shambles. An upturned chair lay haphazardly against the wall, one of its legs cracked at the base. Yellow sheets spilled from the bed and onto the floor, so torn in places that it looked as if a cougar had spent the night. A few drops of blood darkened the floorboards.

Sprawled at his feet was Karen, clutching her jaw and staring up at Arthur as he approached without sparing a word to her or her attacker.

“I done paid for the room and the girl!” the man shouted, his voice carrying out of the door, down the hallway, and into the lobby. “Get out of here!”

Arthur strode forward without hesitation. “I can bet you ain’t paid to beat her.”

Madelaine followed in his wake. She didn’t pay any mind to what followed, to the back and forth between the men. Every scrap of her attention was laid upon Karen, who didn’t seem to understand why she was helping her.

“You’ve gotta stand up, chère,” she whispered to her as the two men lashed out at each other. Another wave of panic threatened to seize her, but Karen needed patience after getting smacked like that. She had to sort through a few things before getting her legs to work. “Come on. I’ll help you downstairs while your friend sorts out the rest, you hear?”

Karen dusted Madelaine’s hands away from her arms. The expression she wore was a grateful one, even with the ache in her jaw, but aside from that, she wore pride. It took some effort, but she managed to stand without any more than the smallest of wobbles on her heeled shoes.

Just as soon as Karen was stable, the struggle was ended with another thump.

The man plummeted to the ground in a heap of bones and flesh. Another trickle of blood leaked from his nose onto the floor, just another mess to clean.

“The hell was this about?” Arthur said, turning on Karen in frustration more than anger. “You said you was gonna find some kind of diversion.” He shook out his hand before straightening himself out. His voice softened, only an impression of its former rasp left behind. “You girls ain’t nothing but trouble.”

Karen’s eyes shifted past Arthur’s shoulder to Madelaine. There was a moment when she was convinced Karen wouldn’t speak until she was gone, but that moment passed quickly enough.

“I’m just rusty, is all,” Karen said, folding her arms over her chest. She looked as sullen as a scolded child with her full bottom lip poking out from the other. “I haven’t tried playing a man in almost two whole months, you know.”

Arthur let go of a sigh that shook his broad shoulders.

Then, nearly at the same time, he and Madelaine asked: “Are you alright?”

Their harmonizing made Karen snort around a laugh. She winced just after, rubbing at the growing bruise beside her mouth. “I’m fine,” she insisted before taking her first step forward, stopping for a moment to give the fellow a sharp kick in his knee before leaving.

Madelaine listened to Karen’s hitched steps as they faded down the hall and quieted even more once she made her way down the stairs. The urge to help nearly drove her to rush after the poor woman, but she gripped her own reins as tight as she could and stood there, quiet, watching as Arthur Morgan took account of the room. She couldn’t tell if he was planning on paying for repairs or if he just intended to clear up any evidence of him or Karen being there.

She didn’t know how outlaws operated.

She didn’t think the Van der Linde gang was anything like the other operations in the area, but she didn’t know enough about them to be sure.

“Thank you, miss.” Arthur unbuckled his satchel with one hand and approached her with a clip of money between his index and middle finger. “Just… keep this. It ain’t for the hotel.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the man sprawled out on the floor, unconscious and bleeding. “Make him pay for the damages.”

The clip held twenty dollars and some from what she could tell. No one had ever been so generous.

“I couldn’t do nothin’,” Madelaine murmured without looking up at him. He held out the money again, and she took it, holding the folded bills close to her chest. “You shouldn’t give me this, Mister Morgan.”

Arthur huffed quietly, setting his hand on her shoulder as he moved past her. “Your hollering got me up here quicker. You helped her as much as I did.”

She opened her mouth to thank him, but he was already gone, leaving her alone with the piece of trash he just about killed. That didn’t bother her any; Arthur struck her as the sort of man who didn’t much like being thanked for anything.

Tucking the money into her belt, Madelaine stepped over the bunched up rug and out past the door that sat awkwardly on its hinges. She still had a room to clean, but that could wait until she spoke to Mister Hughes about the incident.

Madelaine knew the Saints Hotel’s proprietor would be furious in his own way — the kind of way that put a man in tears the moment he was alone. That didn’t frighten her. He was too gentle natured to raise his voice or blame her for what happened. What worried her was what would come next. The sheriff would visit. He’d question her, question the man, inspect the room. There wasn’t much space in the hotel to begin with.

Money was bound to be a little shorter soon. At least she had the clip Arthur gave her.

Madelaine pressed her fingertips over where she knew it rested under her belt. She wondered if he had anticipated what would happen, if this was his way to apologize for all that happened and what would happen in the coming days.

He was a sweet-hearted man, and he could kick in a door like nobody’s business.

She understood why all the ladies working at the Saints went silly when he was around.

* * *

Two days later, a new face arrived at Saints Hotel and asked for her by name.

It was Evelyn who told her the man was waiting in the bathing room on the first floor. She carried weighty purple bags under her eyes that even a bit of makeup couldn’t hide, and Madelaine sympathized with her. The only reason she slept well enough at night was because of Mister Morgan’s generosity.

“You’re wanted in the bath downstairs,” Evelyn said without looking up from her work the moment Madelaine stepped through the door that led in from out back. “He asked for you by name, so you best hurry up.”

There wasn’t a minute that passed from Tuesday to late Thursday when she hadn’t been hurrying.

Still, she ducked out of the back of the hotel and asked Harvey to bring in two buckets of water as she always did. This time, there was no request for the oil from Penhaligon’s, so she knew it wasn’t Dutch asking after her.

More’s the pity, she thought to herself as she folded a towel over her arm and made her way over to the room. I don’t know why I keep expecting him to show up.

A gentle knock alerted the man inside that she had arrived, and when she opened the door, he stood there in his underthings, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. He was massive in size, larger than both Dutch and Arthur by more than a little, with an impressive beard and a receding hairline. None of that meant he wasn’t handsome, however.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Madelaine said with a cordial smile as she set the towel down on the seat of a chair pushed against the corner of the wall. “The water’ll be in soon. Do you need help with anything?”

“You’re Madelaine?”

The man’s voice was higher than he expected. Reedy, even.

She turned to him, already nodding. “Yes, I’m Madelaine,” she said. “You requested me, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, just… gimme a —” He twisted away from her to rifle through his belongings. His long underwear was old and worn through on one of his knees, yellowed with age. It hugged his belly as he bent over. “I got somethin’ for you.”

One of Madelaine’s brows rose. “You have something for me?”

“Yeah,” he repeated himself. His rummaging grew more and more insistent until he finally found what he was looking for, leaving his muttered curses by the wayside as he stood and handed her a neatly folded slip of paper. “From Dutch.”

The surprise that already sat on her face grew in size, forcing her eyes to widen. She took the slip of paper he offered her.

Rather than opening it right there, Madelaine looked across at him. She didn’t know which of the stories belonged to this man. Neither Dutch nor Arthur had mentioned him in the past. Or, if they had, they neglected to describe him in any capacity. “What’s your name?”

“Bill,” Bill said. He set his hands high on his hips for a moment before dropping them to his sides, visibly uncomfortable with the situation at hand. She could tell it wasn’t so much the letter as his state of undress and her unwillingness to leave. “Bill Williamson.”

Madelaine nodded. Her fingers curled around one of the paper’s folded corners.

“I heard what you did for Karen.” Bill shifted on his feet. When Madelaine looked away to offer him some amount of privacy, she heard him let go of a relieved sigh. “Can’t believe she let herself get caught like that.”

“No man should ever lay his hands on a woman. Not like that.” Madelaine cleared her throat. “I didn’t do much, but I did what I could.”

Setting the letter down beside the towel, Madelaine unbuttoned the sleeves of her shirt and began to roll them up to avoid dragging them through the water. She was nearly done when Bill interrupted her with a hoarse, “Now, you don’t got to do that.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’d rather bathe in peace, if you don’t mind.”

The request wasn’t unheard of. Most of the time, Madelaine didn’t do any more than facilitate the beginning of the bath — the soaps, the hot water, the drink of choice. Not many people asked for her help. They were either busy or cheap, and she didn’t mind that. It gave her the opportunity to breathe and collect herself for once until someone put another job in her hands.

Before she left, Madelaine picked up the letter and held it tight enough to wrinkle in her hand.

Harvey met her in the hallway, looking about as ragged as everyone was feeling. She gave him directions, thanked him, and went on her way without any unnecessary exchange of words.

The Saints was just as busy as it always was in the summertime, even with one of the rooms unoccupied for fixing. Mister Hughes hated turning people away, but turn them away, he did. There was even one newly wed couple on a tour of New Hanover sharing a room with an old dowager who was passing through to Strawberry, simply because they had nowhere else to stay for the night.

She couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into someone, nowhere except the hutch out back where everyone was busy washing bedsheets and laundering clothes for the ladies and gentlemen passing through.

The yard out back was muddier than ever. Even the wooden planks that ran through from the hotel to the front stoop of the house out back was wet with the stuff, dark and malleable near the center. It wobbled something awful as she crossed it and prayed to God that she didn’t fall, thinking more of the letter she held at her side than her dress.

There was no one in the large room except for Viola. Both Evelyn and Ngoc were cleaning rooms, leaving the oldest of them to stir the giant buckets of water and lye and soaked through sheets as yellow as buttercups.

“What you got there, sweetheart?” Viola asked her from where she stood, leaned up against one of the sturdier chairs rather than sitting on it. In her hands, the paddle was quicker than anyone else could manage. “One of the boys slip you that?”

Madelaine laughed, even though her assumptions weren’t wrong.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said, and that wasn’t wrong, either. She didn’t know the first thing about what the letter said. “He only delivered the letter; it’s from someone else.”

Viola made a sound that sat somewhere between understanding and disinterest.

While Madelaine had thought to be alone while she read the note, she knew that Viola’s hearing wasn’t the strongest, and if she whispered, it would be as if she was the only person for miles. There was something exciting about that. She smiled as she sat carefully on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs.

The letter itself was far from perfect.

She smoothed out the wrinkles she made in the paper with her fingertips. The sheet was ripped on one side, torn from a book or a journal, and there were flecks of ink in places. Fountain pens could be temperamental in her limited experience with them. Lines of omission cut through a few words and fewer sentences.

“Miss Madelaine,” the writing began. Dutch’s handwriting was slender and tall, like the words had been stretched out purposefully. “I hope this letter reaches you within the week. Bill can be a trustworthy man when he deigns to be one. I hope he has not bothered you much upon delivery. I am afraid he does not fully understand the etiquette of bathhouses and the like, preferring as he does to wash in a basin or even a stream.”

Bill didn’t seem like such a bad fellow.

Dutch didn’t seem to think so, either; there was a fondness to the way he wrote about him that was so clear, Madelaine could hear the warmth in his voice.

“I appreciate all that you have done for me and mine. Your patience and your skills are a fine thing to see in this day and age. The same can be said about your open-minded nature. I hope recent happenings at the Saints Hotel have not dissuaded you from thinking of us with a certain fondness.”

Madelaine couldn’t help but chuckle. He wrote as if they were all monsters and as if she had never seen a drop of blood in all her life.

“I sincerely hope that we will cross paths again soon. If I may say so, I find myself missing your conversation just as often as I find myself thinking of the glorious baths on offer at the hotel.”

Charming.

Dutch van der Linde was charming in a way that almost set her on edge. Men like him were as dangerous as they were beguiling, and she’d wash the britches of a thousand laborers in summertime before she let herself leave behind her place at the Saints Hotel.

“Thank you for what you did for Karen, and thank you for not speaking of what happened to the sheriff. Our place here is tentative, even when we are on our best behavior. You have saved us from having to turn tail and run yet again. For that, I could not be more grateful.” Madelaine wet her bottom lip, thumb trailing over the ripped corner of the page. “Warmest regards, Dutch van der Linde.”

She folded the letter as neatly as she could manage, then folded it in half again, making the slip of paper small enough to tuck into her belt alongside the money she couldn’t bear to part with. Even leaving it at her small home on the edge of town felt dangerous.

“So,” Viola piped up from where she stood. Her tight curls were pulled away from her face and wrapped beneath a brightly dyed cloth, leaving her lined face as bare and open as it could possibly be. Reading her expression was easily done. “Now that I know that’s a letter from some man, you just have to tell me about what the fellow wrote. That look tells me it’s interesting. No doubt.”

All Madelaine offered her was a quiet, “He was thanking me,” as she rose from the chair.

His gratitude wasn’t misplaced. She could have easily given everything over to the sheriff. Names, if not locations. Faces, if not names. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t. She didn’t say a word when pulled out in front of the lawmen, and she wouldn’t say a word if they asked her a thousand times more. The law in Valentine wouldn’t do anything about them, anyway. Nothing short of contacting someone else to deal with them, which might just lead nowhere.

Madelaine knew better than anyone that officers of the law weren’t meant to be trusted. There wasn’t a soul wearing a badge from the East Coast to the West who could do anything about the Van der Linde gang, not even if she led them right to their doorstep.

Not that she wanted to.

There were men who passed through and only brought havoc to the good people of Valentine. From what little she knew of Dutch and his lot, they didn’t seem to be that kind of gang. Making assumptions after only a few weeks was absurd. She knew that, but she couldn’t help herself, either. Never before had she been tipped as generously as she was when it was Dutch or Arthur in the bath.

When they rolled into town, her ceaseless worries about making ends meet disappeared almost overnight. There was no way around the protective feeling she felt when it came to those men and women, even if it didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Thanking you for what?” Viola asked, lifting the paddle from the water only to lean it against the side of the bucket to catch her breath.

Madelaine lifted one of her shoulders in a shrug. “I suppose I helped him,” she said.

The smile that sat at the corner of her mouth was small, but present.


	5. Juniper II.

It was the first week of June and Juniper could still see her breath every time she exhaled.

Mornings were meant to be colder, seeing as the sun was only just starting to show itself, but the icy bite of the air was downright unseasonable. Farther out west, the chill was gone by the time the sun crested over the horizon. One minute, everyone was shivering, and the next, they shed their coats and rolled up their sleeves. She was used to that.

She set her rifle over her thighs and rubbed her hands together, eager to get some warmth down into her fingertips. There was no use in hunting with cold hands; it just meant you’d be slow on pulling the trigger, if you could even pull it in the first place.

As she set about warming her hands, Juniper stared out over the plain and the dirt road that cleaved it in two. Shadow paled the rich green of the grass, turning every blade into a shade of almost-blue. The field across the road was as tall as the one she crouched in and was the perfect hiding spot for a nest of jackrabbits. There wasn’t much use in hiding when your ears pricked up over everything, like a shark’s fin out of the water.

Toffee huffed nearby. A duck and two rabbits were slung over the Arabian’s saddlebags with their feathers and pelts intact. They’d be plucked and skinned once Juniper was able to warm herself up by the fire and not before. She knew well enough that the chances of mauling the meat were higher when she was so damn cold.

“Ssh, girl,” Juniper said, reaching up to rub a careful hand over her mount’s muzzle. “We’ll be done here soon.”

Soon, as long as she could get one last shot in with her rifle. A duck and three rabbits was better than a duck and two. You could feed a whole Bill Williamson with an extra rabbit.

With newly warmed fingers, Juniper lifted her varmint rifle in her arms and leaned into a deeper crouch, one knee in the dirt and the other held just above it. The stance was a little stiff, but that’s what she needed to remain stable as she tracked the largest of the rabbits through the field of grass.

Sharp green eyes darted in one direction, then the other.

If a carriage rolled through and ruined her shot, she’d drag the coachman off his seat and take that instead. They could feed the camp for longer with the money off of that kind of sale. Her luck held out. There weren’t any carriages for more than a mile in either direction, just fog and glistening dew and the cry of birds over head. A few deer grazed on her right, but Toffee couldn’t carry her and her rabbits and a buck back to Horseshoe without some difficulty. She was still recovering after the last shitshow Dutch pulled June into.

Letting go of a slow breath, Juniper followed the rabbit as it lowered itself down into the grass. Its movement was easy enough to follow, so there wasn’t any losing it in the field. A moment passed like the tick of a pocket watch.

One second, one breath. Two seconds, two breaths. Three seconds, three breaths, a rabbit lifted its head above the grass, and a shot in the quiet Heartlands.

Ravens nesting in a tree at back cried out in protest and took to the sky just as the remaining rabbits bolted off in every direction. They were safe, and not only because Juniper was content with her kill. There was no way she’d be able to track them down after that shot.

Rising up onto her feet, Juniper strapped her rifle to the side of Toffee’s saddle and reached for her reins with a quiet, “Come on.”

She heard a rider approaching in the distance — not a stagecoach, but a single rider on a single horse. It was early yet, but the sun was high enough in the sky to bring people out of their homes. She was too tired and too cold to be very surprised.

They made their way across the road and through the knee-high grasses that concealed the rabbit’s body. Juniper only slowed when she saw a splatter of black blood on the shadowed blades of grass and the telltale bend of an animal pushing down on them at the roots. She knew the kill hadn’t been perfect, but the others weren’t bad off. You had to make allowances when it came to hunting. Nothing was ever perfect.

Juniper bent over and lifted up the jackrabbit’s limp body. She grabbed its feet and made quick work of a knot that tied it down beside the duck’s spray of green and white plumage.

The approaching rider disturbed the ravens even more. When they finally let themselves settle down, the drumbeat of the horse’s hooves just stirred them up again, louder than anything she’d ever heard.

Turning towards the road, Juniper recognized the horse before the rider. There weren’t many like Amaranth in New Hanover — big and pretty, with his hair whipping back over Arthur Morgan’s thigh as he rode him east like a bat out of hell. She considered just minding her own business, but Juniper failed that right away, choosing instead to shout out the rider’s name, her clean hand held to her mouth to make her voice even louder.

Those damn ravens just screamed back at her. The sound was so awful, her face twisted itself ugly in retaliation.

Arthur slowed Amaranth down rather than forcing him to rear back or turn too quick. There was a question in his expression before he realized who’d called out to him. She raised her hand in a wave and so did he, two fingers tapping at the brim of his hat.

“Didn’t know you was heading out today,” Juniper said. She stuck a boot through one of Toffee’s stirrups before pulling herself up into the saddle. “Am I interruptin’ some special business?”

She watched as Arthur turned his head and stared up the road in the direction of the sun. He squinted, the skin around his eyes wrinkling.

“Just some work for Strauss.” Arthur’s grip loosened around the reins in his hand. There was something plodding about the way he spoke, like cold honey, like boots through sticking mud. “He’s sending me over to Emerald Ranch to serve hellfire and brimstone onto more poor folks.”

Everyone knew he hated doing Strauss’s dirty work. A few of the men at camp even offered to do it for him on occasion, but he never took them up on that. From what Juniper could see, debt collecting was some kind of penance for Arthur Morgan. Either that or a thumb pressing into a bruise until it sang. There was no one in all the world more keen on punishing themselves than the man right in front of her.

“How’s ‘bout I come along?” Juniper didn’t know how he’d feel about the offer, but there was no harm in asking. “It’s too damn cold for the meat to spoil.”

Arthur chuckled. The sound was sweeter than you’d expect from a man with his history.

“Alright, girl,” he said, patting a hand over Amaranth’s shoulder as he settled down on the saddle again. “Gotta remember to go easy on the ride there, lest poor Toffee fall behind.”

As if she understood the words coming out of her mouth, Juniper felt her mare stamp at the ground with her hooves.

“Now, now,” Juniper warned, urging Toffee forward in a trot. Amaranth kept pace, though it was obvious in the way he carried himself that he was holding back. “There’s nothing wrong with bein’ a little slow. You should know that, Arthur, in those old bones of yours.”

“Those three years I’ve got on you have taken a hell of a toll.”

As the sun rose in front of them, the ocean of blue-gray grass warmed to something more natural. Everything was green as far as her eyes could see save for the ribbon of the dirt road and the train tracks that cut through it a ways ahead. Even more wildlife roused in order to find something to eat, all while three rabbits and a duck swung against the body of her horse with every brisk pound of her hooves.

They conversed about nothing in particular until the conversation rolled around in the direction that it always did — Dutch, Horseshoe, future plans. They didn’t have the money to settle anywhere else, and the weather was still too damn ornery to cross the mountains again.

The Van der Linde gang was grounded, and there was no saving themselves with scraps and odd jobs.

“That’s why I don’t turn down this work,” Arthur called back to her from a few yards ahead, above the sound of hoofbeats and the rushing wind in their ears. They were alone; they were at no risk of being overheard. Not that anyone could understand them due to how fast they were riding, even with Toffee’s injury. Even a slowed Arabian was fast as a shot. “If Strauss is bringing in this kinda money, it might as well happen. Might as well be me.”

Juniper understood, but she understood guilt, too.

She understood what it was like to shut your eyes at night just to feel blood trickling off your fingers, sticky and still warm. And she hadn’t seen a fraction of the things Arthur had. He must’ve been drowning in it.

“Sometimes, the greatest pleasure in life is in telling somebody you won’t do somethin’.” Juniper tipped her head back and let go of a sigh so exaggerated it put an ache in her ribs. “I’ve felt less astride a man than I have when telling somebody, ‘No.’”

Arthur didn’t chuckle that time. He guffawed, slapping his hand down against his thigh.

“I’d agree with you, but I ain’t any good at either of those things, I’m afraid!” He held up a hand, forefinger pointed to the sky. “One, ‘cause I’m too damn stubborn!” A second finger. “And two, ‘cause I’m too damn fat!”

Juniper laughed despite herself. Nobody liked hearing Arthur talk down on himself, but she wasn’t about to stop him when he was just teasing. Neither of them needed to turn that moment into a quiet one.

The road to Emerald Ranch grew warmer as the hour ticked past. With the sun partly aloft in the sky, June was finally able to strip her coat off and tuck the bunched fabric between her legs. There was nothing clean about either of them after a few weeks at camp, but the fresh air made her forget the way her hair stuck together at her scalp or the painful acne on her chin.

Being out in the open and away from the sour attitudes around camp made her remember why she kept going.

“We’re about an hour out,” Arthur said as they slowed their horses into a more manageable pace. Toffee urged Juniper to push her, but she didn’t relent. There was no telling what might happen if she kept going. Too fast or too hard, and she might lose her best horse. “Lady we’re looking for is Lilly Millet.”

“Lilly Millet,” Juniper echoed to get a feel for the name. “You know how much she borrowed?”

“’Bout forty dollars.”

Juniper let go of a low whistle and shook her head. “It’s not much, but sending you out there to wring the money outta her makes it seem like a lot more than it is. Hell of a thing, huh?”

Arthur chewed at a little dry skin on his bottom lip. He didn’t look happy, but Juniper never really saw him happy unless he was around Edwin.

“Hell of a thing.”

The ride took a little longer than they anticipated. Not because of anything dire, but because Amaranth got a little temperamental when Arthur pushed him and didn’t treat him after. Juniper swore up and down that she wouldn’t spoil Toffee, but the horse was quick to demand the same treatment of oatcakes and affirming words after she saw how the other was treated. Their fussiness was indulged for a while, but after that, it was back to a steady pace.

They didn’t know much about Lilly Millet save for how much she owed. Strauss hadn’t given Arthur many details, and Arthur hadn’t asked for any, either. He was the sort of man who pushed a set of doors open and then decided how to act.

A Dutch van der Linde, he was not.

Emerald Ranch was bustling like a city at midday when they arrived. Every morning was an early morning when there were animals to tend to and crops to water; Juniper knew that much from experience. There was no laying abed while there were hungry chickens and cows to be dealt with. She hoped that meant Lilly would be easy enough to find.

The two of them slowed as they rode into town, careful to avoid getting in the way of any of the farmers. It was wise not to frustrate the people you needed information from. That was another lesson she learned early on and a more difficult one to swallow.

June was damn good at frustrating people.

As they rode through the small town, Arthur did his best to get the attention of people far busier than him. A few ignored him outright — including a woman who carried a surprisingly docile chicken in her arms and a man covered from his thighs down in what looked and smelled like pig shit — but others were more helpful, giving them a general direction of where they could find Miss Millet.

The consensus was that Lilly would be found near the edge of town, probably indisposed, definitely with her lover. Arthur frowned at that; he didn’t want to interrupt something, not with talks of debts.

Strauss wouldn’t appreciate him going back to camp empty-handed. Dutch would appreciate it even less.

“You ever try taking money from someone?” Arthur asked her as they pulled away from another group of almost helpful farmers. He shook his head and hurried Amaranth along. “When they had to beg for that money to begin with? This ain’t stealing. It’s just another kind of killing.”

Everyone in camp tolerated Leopold Strauss because he was good with money. He had a handle on things that most of them didn’t even begin to understand. They were outlaws and killers. Their dollars were covered in blood, and you couldn’t spend money like that. Strauss was the reason shipments of food and medicine reached the camp. Strauss was the reason they had bullets that weren’t just plucked up off of bodies.

So, when Strauss asked them to work, they worked, even if they hated the job.

“Before I joined up with y’all, I only ever stole once,” Juniper said.

The story was one she passed around a lot at camp. Everyone who knew Juniper knew what she came from and how she got there. That’s why she wasn’t surprised when Arthur glanced back at her and said, “You robbed your pa blind.”

Juniper rolled her shoulders back, bouncing a little on her saddle.

“Never was a man who deserved it more.”

“All I’m saying is that this might be… an experience for you.” Typical Arthur. If someone wanted to draw a gun alongside him, he let them, but that was always their decision to make. “You can hang back if —”

Juniper pushed her hat down farther on her head. “Nah, I’m comin’.”

He accepted that. The fact that he didn’t ask twice was part of the reason why she liked him so much.

“Looks like our girl right up there,” Arthur said, motioning with one hand towards a bench crowded against the side of a shed. They were framed by long planks of wood, darkened by the early morning’s dew. Lassos hung from pegs on the wall like roughly woven wheels of gold. “Glad to see they’re not ‘indisposed.’”

Juniper gave a snort of laughter.

The couple wasn’t kissing or touching, not petting each other instead of working. No, they were fighting. The assumed Lilly Millet was on her feet, stamping hard enough on the dusty ground to kick all manner of the stuff up onto the rich red-brown fabric of her skirts. Even from a distance and even under all that desperate anger, June could see that she was a pretty thing. The sun caught her copper hair and turned it molten.

“Come on, Cooper!” she pleaded, her hands caught up into fists in her skirt rather than pressed together. Like she wanted to punch him more than beg him. “It’s gotta be this week!”

The man tipped his head back against the shed, his bowler hat shifting upward on his head to bare a receding hairline. His voice carried no small amount of weariness. This wasn’t their first conversation on the subject.

“I’ll get you your money next week.”

“How am I gonna believe you?” Lilly snapped. “How? You were supposed to get me the money this week!”

Cooper’s broad chest rose and fell with a sigh. He peered up at her, mustache twitching. “Love is patience, huh? Isn’t that the saying?” He pointed at her, jabbing his finger twice in the air before giving up. “Thought it was, at least.”

Just as soon as Lilly threw her hands into the air, they both realized they weren’t alone. Passionate arguments tended to cramp a person’s awareness, no matter how big the man or the horse approaching was. Arthur tipped his hat at them both before sliding off of Amaranth’s saddle. Twin pistols rode in the holsters he wore, all rich leather and silver fastenings and fringe.

“Good day to you both,” Arthur said in greeting, as cordial as a man like him was capable of being. “And I, uh… apologize for interrupting.”

Lilly let go of a sharp, flustered breath that tossed a lock of ginger hair into the sky.

Emerald Ranch was full of sounds. Most of them were just farm animals, but the horn of a passing train or the rumble a stagecoach sometimes pierced the mooing. Right then, though, Juniper swore she could hear nothing more than their four hearts beating as she sank to the ground alongside Arthur.

“You got a reason for interrupting?” Cooper asked. He leaned forward on the bench, and when he did, his hat tipped back down over his forehead.

Arthur didn’t hesitate so much as quietly take note of the shift in atmosphere. Lilly knew why he was there. So did Cooper. That much was obvious in the tension that lanced through the air like a bird of prey. “I came here to get my payment.”

Lilly whirled on Arthur in a flurry of rust-colored skirts. Her long face pinched into an expression that was almost apologetic, but not quite there, as if her fingertips just barely brushed against the face she wanted to make rather than grabbing on. She didn’t have the money, but she wasn’t sorry about it. The word Juniper’s mind conjured up was indignant. “I don’t have it.”

“’Course you don’t have the money,” Arthur sighed, lifting up his hat in order to smooth a hand down over his head. “Now, where am I supposed to get it, then?”

“Cooper, pay the man.”

Cooper stood from the bench, already working his jaw. “I told you: I ain’t got the money,” he said. He unbuttoned his sleeves and began rolling them up, baring forearms covered in the banded muscle of a hard worker. “You can come back next week, or not at all.”

Wrong answer.

Juniper watched Arthur’s broad shoulders go rigid under his coat. The seams must’ve been stronger than any in the world — steel rather than string. She watched as his jaw went stiff under a few days of scruff. She watched, and she waited. Because she knew the direction Cooper was leading them in, just as clearly as Arthur understood it.

“Don’t,” Lilly said, a tinny whine in her voice. “Cooper, please don’t do this.”

So, Lilly knew where this was headed as well as the rest of them.

When Arthur didn’t get on his horse and ride away, that man made a decision. Fighting was worth not forking over forty dollars he couldn’t afford to spend. Maybe even killing a man was worth that much. The bounty wouldn’t be any more than half of that, if anyone ever found Arthur’s body to begin with. But that conclusion would only be met if Arthur didn’t win.

And Arthur usually won when it came to throwing fists.

Cooper hunched down and raised both of his hands, knuckles blown white in his grip. He had the stance of a man who was used to fighting, who got his kicks from a struggle. She knew a few men from the gang like that.

There were only a few, though. Most of Dutch’s boys preferred a shootout to a good- or bad-natured brawl. Arthur was one of those men, but he knew when he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t even ask any questions, didn’t try to stop him. He just hunkered down and lifted his fists, his body bent in a dangerous curve.

“Just give him the money!” Lilly shouted.

If she kept crying out like this, farmers would converge on the fight like a flock of sheep. And if that happened, whoever the fight didn’t kill would end up with a bounty on his head. June was sure of that.

So, rather than getting in Arthur’s way, Juniper grabbed for Lilly. The woman was taller than June by more than a few inches and heartier, too, with thick limbs underneath her pretty blouse and skirt. That didn’t stop her from fighting, or from clamping her hand over Lilly’s mouth to keep her from screaming.

Lilly hunched over suddenly, lifting Juniper off of the ground right as Cooper took his first swing. Trying to quiet her down was like riding an unbroken horse, but she never lost her grip, not even when she felt herself sliding forward to be thrown over her head.

That never happened.

Juniper swung around her, sticking her boots onto the dirt and winding an arm around Lilly’s neck. At her back, she heard the sickening thunk of a fist against flesh, followed by a watery gasp of pain that she couldn’t place. Whether it was Arthur or Cooper, she couldn’t quite tell. All men sounded the same when they got hurt, unless that hurt was strong enough to make them cry.

“Shut yer mouth,” June warned Lilly, her blunt nails scratching around the woman’s mouth as she struggled to keep her still. “Stop all that yellin’. It won’t get you nowhere.”

She didn’t stop, didn’t listen. She kept bellowing. She kept trying in vain to pull Juniper up off of her feet.

Every time Lilly jerked around, Juniper’s ginger braid whipped behind her like a horse’s tail.

There was another impact, another wet grunt, the sound of someone slipping on the dirt. She couldn’t turn to look at the action. Not knowing what was going on behind her was the worst sort of mystery. For all she knew, Cooper would finish Arthur off and go for her. There was nothing in the world that she wanted less than that. She just wanted to get out of there with no more than a few bruises on her ribs from Lilly Millet’s bony elbow.

Strauss’s money didn’t matter to her. It didn’t matter to Arthur, either, but there they were, being forced to care by circumstance alone.

Juniper didn’t much care for dragging a woman to the ground, but considering Lilly’s size, she didn’t have any other choice if she wanted to get her bearings. She hauled her forward and dropped to her knees on the dirt path, hauling Lilly down with her. The only sound the woman made was a muffled squeal of surprise as she flopped down onto the ground. Her struggling was less intense when she didn’t have the advantage of her height and weight.

When June finally looked up at Arthur, it was just in time to see Cooper wallop him right in his jaw. She felt a pang of sympathy; the bruise on her own had only just stopped being so tender in the last week or so.

Despite the punch, Cooper seemed worse for wear. Blood gushed from his nose, down into his mouth. One of his teeth was missing from the look of things, and he was more than a little unsteady on his feet. That last blow wasn’t any more than a last hurrah before Arthur finished him up.

Juniper didn’t expect him to kill him, though.

In her mind, they left Cooper unconscious and forty dollars worth of valuables lighter. In her mind, they got on their horses and rode west for Horseshoe Overlook. In her mind, everyone lived, and the day ended with Strauss’s debts paid, three rabbits, and a duck.

Things didn’t go as she planned. They rarely ever did.

Arthur stumbled back a step as Cooper pushed forward, and when he lashed out, he slammed the heel of his palm into Cooper’s already broken nose. The cartilage pushed back at an impossible angle.

For a moment, Cooper went still. For a moment, he just looked shocked rather than dead. That moment passed, and Cooper plummeted to the ground in a puff of reddish dirt.

Juniper’s hand slipped, and Lilly let go of a scream unlike anything she’d ever heard.

That scream could wake the dead, but it didn’t wake Cooper.

Just as soon as Cooper dropped and Lilly screamed, she caught a rustle out of the corner of her eye as some farmer came around the corner, adjusting the waist of his jeans. He stopped short, staring. Even from a distance, she saw nothing but the white of his eyes.

Fights were nothing but a string of moments and snap decisions. So was killing folks.

Arthur turned and pulled one of his pistols from its holster off the front of his belt. Lilly scrambled forward in some quickly dashed hope that Cooper might be alive. And Juniper moved to stand, her foot catching on the ground beneath her. That moment before she hit the dirt seemed like it took years to pass. She reached outward and pulled herself up onto her boots, and time found itself again.

“Don’t shoot ‘im!” Juniper yelled as she reached the shed, as she hitched herself up on her tiptoes to remove one of the lassos from the side of the building. “I got this!”

From her place on the ground, Lilly choked on a shocked sob, but there was no stopping to calm her, no offering her sympathies. Arthur would handle that as he robbed her lover blind for the sake of Herr Strauss.

Juniper leapt onto Toffee’s saddle and urged her forward in a sudden flash of cream and copper. The man was only quick by the nature of panic, but there wasn’t much distance to cross between the ranch and the authorities. Cooper was dead, and Arthur would have a bounty to pay if she didn’t stop him and convince him not to keep running.

Rearing back, Juniper gripped the lasso in hand and circled it above her head.

Lassoing men wasn’t the same as lassoing a bull. They were narrower. Sometimes quicker, too, depending on the situation. She sucked in a slow, even breath, her arm pumping as she swirled the lasso over her head.

Toffee kept pace with the man rather than overtaking him, giving Juniper the means to steady herself and the loop of rope until she was sure she’d grab him with a single throw. There wasn’t much June felt confident in, but this was one of them, even though she’d never had a reason to lasso a man before. She’d learn.

Letting the lasso free, she watched the rope sail forward and drop around the man’s shoulder. The loop was wide enough to fall down around his chest, and that was when she snapped back, tugging him off of his feet and into the tall grass. He didn’t have air enough in his lungs to scream for help. All he could manage was a pained gasp, same as Cooper.

Toffee slowed with a cry, hitching up onto her hind legs for a moment before slamming her hooves back down onto the ground.

The man’s response was nothing but a whimper in between each labored breath. Juniper tugged at the rope as she slid down from Toffee’s saddle, passing the rope through one hand to be gripped by the other. She approached him without a word and turned him over onto his back without one, either.

He was on the older side, with silver in his hair and pale lines on his forehead where dirt didn’t get into his wrinkles. And in his eyes, there was nothing but panic. Nothing but fear.

“You say nothin’,” Juniper began, her one-handed grip on the lasso tight as she pulled a pistol from its holster, aiming it right at the man’s mouth rather than his forehead. She wanted him to look at her when she spoke to him. “We was just getting our dues, you hear me? Cooper started that fight. My friend just ended it more forcefully than he should have.”

Her hand wavered, but the man was in too much of a state to notice. He stared up at her, unblinking.

“What do you want?” he rasped. “I don’t wanna get shot.”

“Don’t report what happened.” Juniper didn’t want to shoot the man, even though she knew Dutch would have. Arthur would have. Most of the gang would have. Maybe that made her soft, but she didn’t care. “Just go on with yer life instead of giving it up like Cooper back there for forty dollars.”

Tears beaded in the man’s eyes. They grew and grew until they dropped down over his temples.

“Please. Please, I got a wife back home. Two daughters.” Stories like that never did work on her much. Juniper wasn’t moved by tales of familial bonds, of love and children and home. There was a disconnect there, and the man must have noticed because he backtracked, changing his tune. “I need my job and my life. I don’t wanna die for this. Cooper was an ass anyway.”

His voice rose at the end like the statement was a question. He winced, waiting for her reaction and finding a favorable one.

“Don’t,” Juniper said, standing up and tucking her pistol back into its holster. “Say,” she said as she took out a knife instead, something to cut the ropes. “Anything.”

“Not a God-forsaken word,” the man promised, and she believed him.

Once he was free, Juniper sent him off in the direction of Emerald Ranch without another shared word between them. She didn’t have anything more to say, and she wagered he just wanted to get back to work. Or go find his two daughters and give their foreheads a kiss.

She saw Arthur on Amaranth in the distance, crossing the field with his satchel open at his side.

“You got what was owed?” Juniper asked, climbing onto Toffee’s saddle before urging her to turn and face west. She noticed that Arthur’s eyes trailed the man she’d caught running for help. “He won’t say nothin’.”

Arthur picked up one of the items in his satchel — a shiny belt buckle, likely worth a few dollars. “Junk, mostly, but a few things Strauss could turn into money.”

“That’s what matters, ain’t it?”

The look Arthur narrowed at her was another she understood as easily as reading the words on a page. Plucking belt buckles and pulling rings off of corpses wasn’t his idea of a job gone right. If he’d done things properly, his satchel would hold nothing but salted meat and thirty-eight dollars. Instead, he jangled every time Amaranth took a long stride.

There was no getting used to that sound, no matter how long the ride was back to Horseshoe.

That morning, long before the sun was even a sliver on the horizon, Juniper knew what her day would be. She knew that her waking hours would be spent hunting down game for the camp and pelts for the trapper. She devoured a bread roll with salted butter and scraped a tin of peaches clean knowing what she’d be doing well into the afternoon.

But plans changed. Arthur Morgan was a hell of a catalyst for change.

Riding back to camp with valuables clinking in his satchel, Juniper couldn’t help but give herself over to disappointment. Simplicity was a godsend to someone like her. What she wanted was to follow the clearest of paths, pushing her feet into prints left behind by others before her. There was none of that anymore, and simple days were few and far between.

Rarity made them even more precious.

“Thanks for taking me along, Arthur,” Juniper found herself saying all of a sudden, halfway in between Emerald Ranch and Horseshoe Overlook. The sun rained warmth and light upon them. Under her blouse and vest, her skin grew damp with sweat. “I might’ve had a boring day, if not for you.”

She caught him rubbing at his jaw as he rode. The pace was comfortable, but his pain was clear as anything in how he sat astride the saddle, in how he wouldn’t leave the would-be bruise alone.

“Don’t you like boring?” He chuckled when she didn’t respond to his question, thumb trailing over the curve of his chin. “Right. Forget I asked.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way, only stopping beneath the overturned tree to call out to John that they’d returned. Marston didn’t move from his post, but laughed when Arthur shot a good-natured, “Dumbass,” in his direction.

No one met them with any questions when they slowed to hitch their horses. Even Strauss remained at his makeshift desk, back to the rest of the camp, knowing that Arthur hadn’t disappointed him.

The Van der Linde gang operated strangely, in Juniper’s eyes. Everyone was privy to the business of everyone else, but they found out through murmured conversations and sideways looks most of the time. She still hadn’t gotten used to sharing everything with the group — game, money, nightmares. There was no clamor for information and no raised heads. They stuck to their business, knowing they’d find out what happened at Emerald Ranch later on.

Lifting the strings of game up onto her shoulder, Juniper made her way toward the chuckwagon. There, she’d find the knives she needed for skinning the creatures. There, she’d find a man willing to cook anything that passed his chopping block.

Just before she was within earshot of Pearson, though, she all but ran into Abigail, who whirled around when their shoulders brushed.

“You seen Jack?” she asked. The bruises under her eyes hadn’t gone away in all the time Juniper had known her. Feathers of dark hair fell away from her loose bun, somehow making her look even more worried. “Lord, please tell me you’ve seen him.”

“I only just got back.” Juniper looked around, leaning up onto the balls of her feet to get a better view of the camp. She couldn’t see the boy, but she knew he was around. Only Abigail ever mothered the boy, but everyone took care of him, all the same. She shrugged her shoulders, the rabbits and duck weighing on her fingers. “Might be that John took him out on watch?”

Aibgail snorted her disbelief. “You can’t really think that, can you?”

Again, Juniper shrugged. She knew Jack would be found just as soon as Abigail asked the right person, but she wasn’t the right person.

A broad hand fell against Abigail’s shoulder, and when they both looked up, they saw Arthur standing beside them. “I saw the boy by Dutch’s tent, listening to his music.” The corner of Arthur’s mouth twitched upward in something that was almost a smile. “Go and find him.”

Abigail turned and hurried off in the direction Arthur sent her in after leaving him with a few, rushed ‘thank you’s.

Both he and Juniper watched as she turned the corner and Jack stood up from where he’d been sitting, so small and so quiet that he was easy to miss. The almost smile was a smile when his attention shifted to Juniper and he lifted one of the strings of game from her shoulder.

“Earlier, you thanked me for taking you along.” Arthur moved alongside her, his gait slowed in order to make keeping up easier on her legs. “That should be me.”

“Huh?”

“If you hadn’t been there, I woulda got caught, and I can’t afford the bounty right now.” He heaved a sigh as he dropped the duck and rabbit on the slab of wood Pearson used for chopping meat for his stew. “So, ah… I’m grateful.”

Juniper’s laugh was hoarse from swallowing too much crisp wind on the ride back to camp.

“Don’t mind,” she said, and she meant it.

Dropping her kills on the block, Juniper nudged her elbow into Arthur’s side. She didn’t need his gratitude. What she needed was to wash her face and have a meal and sleep off the day on her bedroll.

But the day wasn’t over.

The sun sat high in the sky, casting flickering shadows onto the ground beneath the trees, and there was a commotion coming from the direction of Dutch’s tent — sudden shouting, a pleading note in a female voice, all above the sound of some trembling classical tune she couldn’t quite place that was playing on the graphophone. Her shoulders sank. The look she aimed up at Arthur said more than her mouth ever could have.

There was always something happening in camp.

There was never time to rest.


	6. Charlotte II.

Charlotte’s voice returned a few days after she arrived at Horseshoe Overlook. The muscles in her legs and back ached for a while longer. Dutch looked after her, which she would have appreciated much more if she didn’t feel like he was doing it just to keep an eye on her at all times.

As if she would steal one of the horses and ride to the nearest authorities.

A week passed from that fateful day in Valentine. While she didn’t mind the way most of them looked at her, the isolation wasn’t as easy to swallow. They rarely spoke to her, even when she’d fully regained her ability to talk back, and even then, they spoke only to tell her something she’d done incorrectly or forgotten to do at all. The only person who gave her any of their time was Juniper, and she wasn’t any good at carrying a conversation. More often than not, Charlotte found herself talking to herself about nothing in particular with Juniper within earshot, idly cleaning her rifle with little to say.

June brought her voice and her strength back, as well as a desire to integrate herself into the gang. She wasn’t an outlaw-in-training by any means, and she knew that much. She was under no inclination that she would ever be anything more than a camp follower, safe as long as Dutch and his fellows were doing good work. Or, rather, bad work.

Awful, lucrative work.

There was something she could do, though, that set her apart from the other women. Mary-Beth was a wonderful writer. Karen was as loud as she was charming. In another life, she might have been an actress. Grimshaw could run a camp without leaving her bedroll in the morning. And she…

She could paint.

With the knowledge of what she could offer Dutch in order to earn her keep came the knowledge that she would have to ask him a favor. Her paintbox had been left behind on the train from Annesburg to Valentine when Bronte’s grunts grabbed her. She had no tools — no pigment, no brushes, no canvas. If she was going to create anything in order to bring money into the gang, she would have to order replacements from a shop in Saint Denis. Something of an investment.

Bringing her offer to the feet of Dutch van der Linde hadn’t been an easy task to begin with.

Many times, she approached his tent only to turn away at the last moment, taking some time to disparage herself while she sat on one of the boulders that faced a drop that led down into the valley. That happened more times than she had any desire to count. Once or twice, she caught Molly O’Shea staring at her over the small mirror she kept close to fix her windblown hair, confused and interested at the same time.

The day she finally stepped up to Dutch and gave him her offer began with a chill. Both Juniper and Arthur were gone, busy with something that took them away from the camp long before sunrise. Karen and Tilly stood at the basin, washing their faces, while Jack stood on an old apple crate beside them, using a bone-handled brush to scrub at his teeth after breakfast. No amount of washing her face and neck could supplant the grimy feeling that crawled over her skin every time she so much as caught a glimpse of her reflection. That was another thing she’d have to grow to tolerate.

Tugging a shawl she borrowed from Tilly around her shoulders, Charlotte cut across the clearing with the dusty hem of her dress dragging over the ground.

A slow-moving energy stretched over the camp like dew that was just beginning to shine as the sun rose higher in the air. Even Dutch was only just beginning his morning, sitting up in his cot with his hat poised on one knee. He slid his fingers back through his hair before placing it on top of his head. Only then did he notice her approach.

When Dutch spoke, he spoke with the rattle of sleep still in his throat. “Good morning, Miss Glanville.”

“Good morning.” She was a tall woman, but Dutch was taller still, making her tip her head back to meet his eyes. “I was hoping I could speak to you about something.”

At first, the only response she received from him was a nod. He moved past her to lean against the wooden pole that kept his tent aloft, his strides long but a little stiff. There was no comfort to be found on a cot or on a bedroll; she could sympathize with that. Sleep hadn’t visited her for a full night since her last in Annesburg.

“And just what would this ‘something’ entail?” Dutch asked. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his trousers. “It must be important, seeing as you have asked for my attention before I’ve even had my breakfast.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. Eagerness mixed with an almost uncharacteristic amount of bravery brought her there in front of him at such an early hour. If she hadn’t been so desperate to finally speak to him, she might have waited. But if she waited, she might have convinced herself not to approach him at all.

Again.

“I believe I have a way to contribute that isn’t only mending clothes and carting buckets across camp,” she began. Her fingers laced in front of her, curling tight enough around each other to blanch of all color. “I don’t take issue with chores, but… I have more to offer than that.”

Interest met Dutch’s eyes. He tipped his head down to look at her, the brim of his hat casting a deep shadow over his brow. “So, do it. You don’t need my permission.”

“I’m not looking for your permission,” Charlotte pressed. It wasn’t fear in her belly, but dread. She had no reason to be afraid of Dutch. Wary, yes, but not afraid. Not when she was still carrying the location of the safe around with her. “When Bronte’s thugs attacked me on the train, I was forced to leave my paintbox behind. I’m afraid that I need money in order to begin my collection of pigments and brushes again. Money that I don’t have in my possession. I was hoping that—”

“That the gang would fund your scribblings?” Dutch’s laugh turned the dread in her guts to indignation. “I’m afraid we are not in need of your assistance at the present time.”

“Scribblings?”

The outlaw didn’t budge. He stood there, hands in his pockets and eyes on her, wearing an expectant expression that only served to frustrate her more. He wanted her to fight back, to say some stupid thing in anger that would make her look like a fool.

Even though he was still a stranger to her, she was beginning to understand how he worked. There was never just no with Dutch van der Linde. He got enjoyment from watching people squirm like a worm on a hook when they weren’t one of his own.

Charlotte took a deep breath and pursed her lips to release it.

“They are not scribblings,” she said. The grip she held on her own hands eased. They fell to her sides only to find refuge in the folds of her skirt. “I was taught by a Greek painter of some regard from the time I was fourteen. My landscapes were featured in a gallery in London. Perhaps not Grosvenor, but the gallery was esteemed in its own right. Near the very end of my time at home, my paintings were worth twenty pounds, sometimes more than that. I could make that sort of money for you, if only you’d let me borrow enough to purchase my supplies again.”

“Twenty pounds…” Dutch tipped his head back to consider her offer. He rubbed his nails over the collar of his shirt as he dragged the moment out between them. “That’s near on forty dollars each?”

He opened his eyes. Charlotte nodded.

“I cannot paint portraits,” she told him with a kernel of hesitance in her voice. There was no need to lie to him, not about that. If she wasn’t forthright about what she could and couldn’t do, he would expect differently from her. Failing to deliver what was promised was a thousand times worse than being unable to do something in the first place. “My father thought it imprudent to focus on something of waning popularity. Arthur could stand to earn more with his camera than I ever could with my shoddy portraits.”

The chuckle her candidness got out of Dutch unraveled a bit of tension in her spine.

“I appreciate your honesty, Miss Glanville.” His dark eyes shifted out over the camp, away from her and towards the men and women wandering around, dining on what smelled like eggs and fried bread. She couldn’t tell if he was still thinking about denying her, or if he was just hungry. Though, she wagered it could have been both. “How much money will you need to get started on these forty-dollars-a-piece paintings?”

The last time she purchased pigments in Saint Denis, that had been all she needed to buy. Now, there were other tools that she needed to purchase again — a pestle and mortar, a muller, linseed oil, a pallet knife, canvases. What had been a simple and relatively inexpensive transaction would be very different now.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “What I need now is to get to the postmaster in Valentine so I can send for a catalog.”

Digging into one of the front pockets of her skirt, she withdrew a small fold of cards. They were covered in different colors, flecked with dried paints, but the words were clear enough for her to pick out the card for Bianchi and White without having to sift through them more than once. At the corners were whorls of gilding — curls of gold that wound above a bold setting and bolder print of the store’s name. The shop owners were a pair of sweet men and passionate artists, always looking for new talent to exhibit in their store windows.

In February of that year, that artist had been her.

“The owners may be willing to give me a discount if I tell them what happened to me,” Charlotte offered, her thumb running over the folded edge of the card. “There’s no doubt that they’ve heard about what happened to my husband. The last time I visited them, I paid ten dollars for my pigments, but that was for an entire line. I only need a few colors in order to paint landscapes out here. White, black, a few shades of blue, yellow, and green.”

She paused to look up at him.

“As I begin to earn money, I could put that towards different pigments.”

“Ten dollars for colored dust,” Dutch murmured, hands still in his pockets and eyes still far away. The platinum pocket watch tucked into his vest was likely worth just as much as her pigments, but she didn’t say so. If he refused to let her borrow the money from him, she planned on giving up. Nothing could make her borrow from Herr Strauss; she’d seen the look in Arthur’s eyes when he returned from collecting that snake’s debts. “I assume that is not all you’ll need.”

Charlotte struggled to remember the prices of other items on the store’s richly polished mahogany shelves. Numbers found her, but she couldn’t be certain, not until she had the catalog in her hands.

“Five dollars for a brush set. I think… two for a pestle and mortar, and for a muller to mix the paints.” She worried at her bottom lip. “I’ll need a few bottles of linseed oil, which is maybe a dollar for two of them. Canvas is more expensive, but that depends entirely on the size of the painting.”

One of Dutch’s thick brows slanted upward suddenly, as if tugged by a string. “You’re asking for quite a lot.”

“I am.”

“And if you make these purchases only to sell none of these paintings of yours, how will you repay this debt you’re taking on?”

Charlotte’s heart beat painfully hard in her chest, but she still held onto the set of shop cards from Saint Denis.

If anything, she clung to them tighter, hard enough to push the stiff corners into her palms. If her paintings didn’t sell, she would have nothing left. Her gambling days were over, and her chances of making a name for herself as an artist without incurring the wrath of Angelo Bronte were narrower than before. In all likelihood, her bright future had bled out with her husband on the front stairs of the Bastille Saloon. In all likelihood, she would live her life as no one and with nothing to offer.

There was nothing more terrifying in all the world. Not fire, not death, not drowning.

But insignificance… The idea of being insignificant replaced her blood with melting snow. It left her feeling stranded in her own skin, desperate for something to cling onto. Hope was pretty enough; she courted the wish of hope more often than not after everything that happened. But to be capable and secure in her own strength — that would change her life.

“I’ll do anything,” Charlotte said, her feet rooted into the ground. “I’ll work my hands bloody. I’ll learn how to shoot a gun. I’ll make up these debts to you if I cannot pay them off in any way you see fit.”

Somewhere above the sheer cliff that bordered the camp, an eagle cried out. At least, Charlotte thought it sounded like one.

“Bill!”

Bill Williamson looked up as he passed, tipping the brim of his hat back to keep the shadow from his eyes as he regarded Dutch. Like everyone else, he was visibly disheveled, with most of his buttons barely holding it together across his broad chest. His beard wanted for a brush, and in his hand, he carried a washed out tin can full of eggs.

“What d’you need me for, Dutch?” he asked. His voice crackled even after he cleared his throat. He tipped his head in Charlotte’s direction, but didn’t greet her with words. “You want breakfast or something?”

“Terribly,” Dutch said, settling a hand over his stomach. He reached out with that same hand when Bill turned to leave him, shaking his forefinger. “But that isn’t why I called you over. No, I have a different sort of favor to ask.”

Bill still held firm to his tin can of scrambled eggs, though he hadn’t taken another bite since Dutch called out his name. Steam curled up out of the open top; there was no fighting the chill in the air. The cold weather felt almost familiar in New Hanover when compared to the humid heat of springtime and early summer in Saint Denis. She could barely stand the temperatures there. When she looked around the camp, she was one of the only people not bundled up and still shivering. It was a blessed change.

“What do you need, Dutch?”

“You were heading out with John within the next few days, right?” Dutch asked, though he knew the answer to that question. Bill opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by him continuing on. “The plan for you to go with him has changed. You’ll take Charlotte here to the station instead, then return to camp rather than meeting us in Valentine.”

That time, Dutch wasn’t able to stop Bill from speaking.

“You’re telling me to take her to the postman instead of running a job?” he asked. He already knew the answer to that question, too. “We’ve been preparing to steal those sheep for almost a week now!”

Charlotte busied herself with folding up the shop cards and pinning them together. If she kept her hands still, she knew they would tremble. Her relationship with Bill Williamson was barely a relationship to begin with. She wasn’t even sure he knew her name, seeing as he only ever nodded at her.

As she stowed the cards in one of her skirt’s shallow pockets, Bill kept going. She’d never seen anyone stand up to Dutch in her few weeks of living at Horseshoe Overlook. Whether he was actually standing up to him or just speaking out, she wasn’t sure.

“I bet you’re gonna just send Arthur with him!”

Dutch worked his jaw. His limited patience with back talk spooled down to its last few inches in an instant. “I’ll send whomever is capable and willing.”

“Arthur.”

“Fine. Yes, I’ll be sending Arthur.”

Charlotte turned toward Bill, her hands curling deep into the fabric of her skirt in a desperate move to have something to hold onto. Truth be told, he frightened her even less than Dutch did for the same reasons, regardless of his size and his apparent strength. She was intimidated, maybe, but not frightened.

Everyone knew what Dutch wanted from her, what he expected from her. Not a one of them would harm a single hair on her head because of that.

“It’ll be a quick enough trip,” she swore. Her fingers twitched in the refuge of her skirt. “I only need a ride there and one back.”

I’ll do anything.

She knew those words met her eyes, even if she did not speak them. They were an echo of what she said to Dutch only moments before. She was tired of that line, spoken in supplication to powerful men as she hoped they would treat her gently.

Her father after a botched attempt at cheating a hand, lit from behind by the club they’d been forced out of, his eyes shivering with furious tears. Her husband when he refused to let her prove herself to him, claiming she would likely cost him everything. Angelo Bronte after he cost her everything. His thugs when they plucked her up off of her seat in the train, her fingers still straining to reach her paintbox.

Dutch van der Linde. Bill Williamson.

Frustration with herself curdled in her guts.

“Find someone else to do it,” Bill told Dutch rather than her, digging his fork into the tin can and taking a big bite of his eggs. He was still chewing when he spoke again. “I’ve got better things to do than taking her to the postman. I’m going with John.”

Charlotte stepped forward without thinking and set a long-fingered hand on Bill’s forearm. “Please!”

He stared down at the place where her hand met the yellowed linen of his shirt, looking as bewildered as she supposed he could. That expression alone pulled her hand away as if she’d been burned. Casting her eyes away from his face, she murmured an apology.

His mouth cracked open to say something, but the sound of someone approaching pulled their attention in a wholly different direction.

Arthur Morgan strode towards them, a fistful of dollars and valuables in his hand. Sunlight glinted off of a belt buckle, shimmered over a chain. But when her eyes reached his face, Charlotte saw that he didn’t look as downtrodden as he usually did when returning from a morning of debt collection.

She was beginning to regret not just asking Herr Strauss to borrow enough for her supplies.

“Good morning, Arthur,” Dutch greeted as his friend passed, nodding at him with a sliver of a smile. “I trust your work for Strauss went well. You seem to be in good spirits.”

Arthur laughed low in his throat as he made his way around them to the ledger. He flipped open the book and scribbled a few things down as he dropped the items into the lockbox right next to it. A belt buckle, a chain, a pocketwatch, twenty dollars. “Had a traveling companion,” he said without looking up. “Things would’ve gone differently if not for her.”

He paused, glancing up from his writing to look between Dutch, Bill, and Charlotte.

“What’s happening here?”

Bill was quick to chime in, stepping towards Arthur as if he expected to get sympathy out of him. His eagerness to induce some kind of outrage made Dutch roll his eyes. “Dutch is tryin’ to take me off the job with Marston,” he said. “The one we’ve been planning for weeks now! And he’s doing it so I can bring her to the postman. Hell, I don’t even know why at this point!”

“I wish to send for a catalog,” Charlotte said, unable to keep quiet but unwilling to truly speak up. She detested how weak her voice sounded to her ears. “It will only take a few hours, not even most of a day.”

Arthur made a thoughtful noise as he closed the lockbox and flipped over the cover of the ledger. “Why’re you bein’ so stubborn?”

“Stubborn!” Bill shoved his fork into the tin can. The rattling sound was sharp and sudden enough to make Charlotte jump. “How’d you like it if Dutch took you off a job just to give you a meaningless one? And I’m askin’ you to stretch your imagination ‘cause he ain’t never done somethin’ like that to you!”

Dutch said nothing. He didn’t even open his mouth when Bill continued. Instead, he watched him with a level stare, his arms folded across his chest, looking almost amused in the hazy light.

“I ain’t going,” Bill said. He picked his fork up again, skewered a chunk of yellow egg, and poked it in Arthur’s direction. “You’re not taking this from me.”

Charlotte looked between Bill and Dutch, her brow furrowed as she attempted to figure out just where the conversation was headed. She couldn’t decide if Dutch would insist that he hadn’t given Bill a choice, or if Arthur would just walk away, uninterested in causing trouble. Even after a few weeks at the camp, she didn’t pretend to understand the men that surrounded her on a daily basis. She didn’t know them any better than their first and last names and what they were capable of.

She learned that through campfire stories and the sorry state of the man tied to one of the trees on the outskirts.

Dutch leaned forward before straightening himself out and letting his arms fall to his sides. When he spoke, his voice flowed with a patience Charlotte understood to be rehearsed. Or, at least, practiced word-by-word over the length of his life.

“Bill…” He took a step down onto the ground from his tent. Reaching out, he settled both hands on Bill’s shoulders and peered up at him without betraying even a flicker of anger. “There’ll be other jobs. Why bother with the sheep, anyway? Everyone knows you’re…” Dutch tasted his bottom lip, considering his word choice. “— overqualified. Let Arthur and John steal farm animals. If Miss Glanville’s plan comes to fruition, you’ll have been the man who brought her there and made all of it possible.”

The shift between anger, suspicion, and a strange sort of delight on Bill’s face was incredible to watch. His mouth tugged up at one corner beneath his thick beard, only visible in the way the change made his eye twitch. Whatever fight he held in his chest blew out of him with a swift wind.

Dutch van der Linde was a master.

His parlor trick wasn’t a card stuck up his sleeve or the dropped-out bottom of a bird cage. It was manipulation.

“When will John be ready?” he asked, still resting his hands on Bill’s broad shoulders. “He mentioned ‘a few days’ on Sunday. How many more should it take for him to prepare?”

“He’ll be ready in two days, Dutch.” Bill held on tight to his tin can full of breakfast. Not many people reached out for Dutch physically. The oldest of them — a man called Hosea — sometimes rested a hand on his back or held his wrist when they spoke. Then, there was Molly. Her intimate interactions with him weren’t surprising, given where she slept. But other than those two, she hadn’t seen anyone touch him, even though he seemed to be quick to use touch to achieve an understanding or get someone to do something for him. “But knowing John, it’ll be three.”

Dutch laughed and gave his head an indulgent shake as he stepped back. “Now, now. There’s no need to criticize him. I’m sure John is doing his very best.”

Bill laughed, too, as if he was in on some secret jape.

As he walked away, Dutch met Arthur’s eyes before turning on his heel and moving back into his tent. “You’ll get your catalog, Miss Glanville. Have them send it to Tacitus Kilgore by way of Valentine,” he said without looking back at her. “Whether you can do anything with it or not remains to be seen.”

* * *

Charlotte rose late in the morning two days later. The hour before she left Horseshoe Overlook with Bill was spent washing up and nibbling on cheese nestled on top of a tough cracker, trying in vain to not fret over the worried knots in her stomach. She had no reason to be nervous. Valentine was nearby, and sending for a catalog only meant a small fee — one she could actually pay without worrying about borrowing from someone else. She hadn’t kept much money on her while traveling, but it was enough.

Brown Jack was just as big as Amaranth, but Bill wasn’t as patient with her as Arthur had been, hoisting her up onto the saddle without a care in the world. At least he didn’t seem to mind her scrambling, though he tensed when she wrapped her arms around his middle.

They didn’t speak the entire way there. It left Charlotte to concentrate on the road beneath Brown Jack’s massive hooves, the brutal dip and lurch of momentum as they rode north towards Valentine. She knew better than to sit astride the saddle, at least, but sitting properly meant she had to cling onto Bill. He seemed to like that even less than the fact that Arthur and John had left the camp at dawn in order to find their sheep.

Every time the horse crested over a rolling hill, Charlotte slammed down onto the saddle with a whimper. Bill remained unconcerned with the pace.

She didn’t think it was due to any sort of malice, considering he and Dutch had smoothed out the situation days ago, but still, she could feel the places where she would ache in the coming week. There, there, and there — each place was a pinprick of light, burning hot.

Focusing on her destination proved difficult, but not impossible. Holding onto Bill to keep herself steady resulted in the same.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Every breath reminded her of their flight from the saloon to Horseshoe Overlook. The passing fields of wildflowers brought her right back onto Amaranth’s back rather than Brown Jack’s, with her arms looped around a different man. This time, she found herself brimming with anticipation rather than fear or dread or anything else that might have reached out at her with both hands. The men at Bianchi and White had been helpful almost beyond comprehension, supportive to a point of near-madness when they learned about her story.

The young daughter of a gambling man. The young wife of another gambling man. The young woman, a painter and a gambler herself, with a war between cards and oil painting in her chest. They saw her tale as romantic and used that to increase attendance at their showings.

If they still felt charitable towards her, the upcoming transaction would command less of a debt.

She bit down on her bottom lip, knowing that was the most she could ask for.

“We’re here,” Bill said, slowing Brown Jack on the dirt path leading up to the line of hitching posts outside of the sunshine yellow building. On the side of the station was painted white and brown lettering, detailing need-to-know information about what the office was capable of. The bold TRAINS TO AND FROM ST. DENIS was all she needed to see. “Shouldn’t take long now, should it?”

He turned in his saddle, using one of his meaty hands to help Charlotte down onto her feet. If he noticed her wobble, he said nothing about it.

“I don’t believe so,” she said. She hoped she didn’t sound unsure.

Wiping the dust from the road off of her skirt, Charlotte turned toward the station and took in a deep breath. There was nothing frightening about the post. Postmasters were usually nice men. Cordial, at the very least. Most of them were bored with their jobs, even at so early an hour.

She nodded to the few men standing around outside of the double doors. One of them tipped his hat in her direction. Another bid her good morning, which encouraged a smile and wish of the same from her. Then, she slipped through the doors and into the large, dimly lit room.

The rounded heels of her boots thunked against the patterned floor with every step, drawing the attention of those idling around out of the sun. Endeavoring to step more lightly, Charlotte leaned onto the balls of her feet.

While the exterior of Valentine Station looked as plain as anything, the interior boasted comforts she hadn’t expected. One of the wooden benches was softened by a maroon cushion. The windows were hung with curtains of a pretty green to match the cushion’s trim. There was a table pushed to the side that was low, but seemed large enough to host a card game or two.

The ride there had made her into a bundle of nerves. Standing there loosened her up again. She was grateful for that.

Waiting in line was no issue. Valentine’s population was low, but there were travelers from every direction during the warmer seasons. That was what she heard from the women at the Saints Hotel, at least. Bronte’s men managing to find a room in such a busy town didn’t surprise her. He had everything with money to spare. As someone who knew intimately that wealth was ephemeral, she hoped he would learn that lesson sooner rather than later.

When the older woman in front of her completed her business, Charlotte stepped up to the desk with what she hoped was a glittering smile.

The man responded in kind beneath his thick mustache. “What can I do you for, miss?”

“I want to send a message to Saint Denis,” she began, removing the clip of cards from her pocket to find the one she kept from Bianchi and White. A seam ran down the middle from being folded up so often, but the letters were perfectly legible. She slid the card over to him. “The business is Bianchi and White. The address is here. I’m hoping to receive a catalog from them.”

“Pardon my curiosity, miss.” The station clerk reached over for a slip of paper, retrieving it and a pen for her. “You’re English as the day is long. Whereabouts are you from, exactly? I’ve never been.”

Charlotte took the piece of paper and the pen and quickly scrawled down the request. She could have lied to him easily enough. There likelihood of a station clerk in Valentine knowing the difference between someone from London and Bristol was slim.

But Charlotte couldn’t lie.

“I’m from London,” she told him as she finished the note, blowing a gentle stream of air against the drying ink. “I’ve only been here in America for seven months now, I believe. Not even a year.”

Handing him the pen, Charlotte stared down at the letter. Dutch giving her the gang’s false name meant that sharing her own in the letter would only cause problems. Instead, she made mention of her exhibit and hoped that they would work together again soon. She mentioned her husband, too. Unfortunate business.

She folded the letter in two once she was sure the ink had dried.

“And who is this from?” the clerk asked.

Charlotte handed him the note, half-worried that this would fall through simply because she refused to put down her own name. How easy would it be for Bronte to find her there, anyway? He knew she was on her way to Valentine; that was how his thugs managed to find her. What harm could there be in telling them that Charlotte Glanville wanted a catalog so she could repurchase her painting supplies?

Dutch van der Linde had been playing this role for longer than she’d been alive.

She did not trust him so far as she could throw him, but she did trust in his experience.

“Tacitus Kilgore,” Charlotte told the man with a smile, folding the card back into her stack of them.

She drew out enough money for the postage, thanked him, and left, grateful for his lack of questioning. At least Bill would have no reason to complain about her taking too long.

As she left the station and emerged into the sun again, Charlotte thought of the warm lights inside and the low table that looked perfect for cards. She thought of the blood-stained table back at camp where she saw the men and women playing poker well into the night. She thought of the click of chips and the delight that came from watching the stack grow and grow, and she felt a pang in her belly that wasn’t unlike hunger.

Bill approached the front of the building on Brown Jack, the brim of his hat sitting so low she could barely see his eyes through the shadow. He held his hands out to her, and she let him lift her right off of the ground and onto the saddle again.

“That was quick,” he muttered. It didn’t sound like a slight.

Charlotte settled as much as she could before holding on tight to Bill’s waist. “Thank you for bringing me.”

But he didn’t turn south for the path that led in the direction of Horseshoe Overlook. He didn’t head east for hunting or west for fishing. He headed north.

North, for Valentine.

“Where are we going?” Charlotte asked him, her voice running thin rather than high. Surely, Bill meant to turn around. Surely. “Dutch said we would go there and back.”

Bill led Brown Jack on. The horse’s footfalls were heavier than any Charlotte had ever heard, pounding against the packed dirt like her heart beat against the cage of her ribs. He didn’t turn around. If anything, he coaxed his mount into an even more precise heading towards the town.

“I want a drink,” was all he told her. “Got a hankering for it while I was waiting on you.”

Charlotte’s fingers curled into his flannel overshirt. No questions followed the last, seeing as there was nothing for her to ask. Regardless of what was going down in Valentine that day, she would be there with Bill against Dutch’s wishes.

She only wished she would end her day on the flat and uncomfortable bedroll she’d gotten so used to over the past weeks, rather than hiding or afraid or on the run. Again.


	7. Madelaine III.

A single gunshot wasn’t nearly enough to spook the ladies of the Saints Hotel.

Duels happened often enough that the sound gave them a jolt and little else. On those days, they avoided the front of the saloons and minded their own business until they were home. Over the years she’d worked there, Madelaine grew to tolerate those sudden gunshots, no matter the cold sweat they left her in in the beginning. Memories whorled around the sound of a discharging gun in her mind — of a girl late at night, her sleep disturbed by a revolver and a blood-curdling scream. Erasing that memory in particular was impossible, but she managed to numb it when given enough time.

No one started yelling until they heard the second gunshot, the third, the fourth. No one pitched down their work and ran until the sound of splintering wood and screaming horses came in through the cracks in the windows.

Madelaine left a man in the bathtub, wringing her hands out in the apron she wore over her skirt before flinging the door open. Evelyn stumbled toward the opposite wall. The whites of her eyes stood out against everything else. She pointed back into the bathing room, her mouth a distressed red gash more than lips and teeth.

“Get back in there,” she said sharply as she jabbed her forefinger in the direction of the man struggling to get out of the tub. His foot slipped, and he grunted, still scrambling to stand. Madelaine could hear the squeaking and claw of nails behind her. Not that it mattered a lick, with what was happening outside. “You ain’t got not reason to be out here.”

“No reason to—?” Madelaine shoved her out of the way. Evelyn was light enough to be easily turned aside, but she was quick. She hurried around Madelaine to push her back, spindly fingers pressing against her stomach to stem her determined stride. “Let me go, Evelyn! Das enough!”

Gripping onto the woman’s wrists, Madelaine shoved them aside and rushed down the long hallway, ignoring the doors that opened and the heads that poked out, curious rather than afraid even after that flurry of gunshots. She didn’t understand how people could live like that without batting an eye. Maybe that was the city girl in her, or maybe she’d just gotten broken along the way.

She hitched her skirts up around her calves and ran down the stairwell that led right into the front of the hotel.

Mister Hughes stood behind the register, his eyes as wide as Evelyn’s. His body was still as stone, all except for his fingers. He tapped against the rich wood of his desk with enough anxiety for three people from the look of it.

“Where’s it comin’ from?” Madelaine asked, taking the last step carefully before setting off in a run right for her employer. He didn’t say anything. His mouth pinched into a useless pucker, ginger brows pinched upward as he looked over her shoulder rather than into her eyes. “Mister Hughes! What direction is the shooting comin’ from? The gunshots! Mister Hughes, please.”

Palming over the man’s narrow shoulders, it took everything she had not to give him a sharp shake. There was something so cowardly about going stiff and quiet at a time like that. Madelaine wished she could be a coward. She wished she had it in her to tense and hide and let herself be afraid.

She felt his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug beneath her hands. His eyes shifted to hers, pupils pinpricks of black against blue.

“I hardly — I h-hardly know.” He wet his lips and blinked, visibly sorting through the flurry of panic in his head. Madelaine might have felt bad for pushing him if she hadn’t already been so afraid herself. “A saloon, I suppose? That… that makes sense.”

“Get somewhere safe,” Madelaine told him. She used her grip on his shoulders to guide him around in the direction of the hallway that led out into the backyard. He went more willingly than she expected. “Make sure Ngoc is there with you. Viola, too!”

Mister Hughes managed little more than a nod as he stumbled in the direction she nudged him in.

Just as soon as he was out of earshot, Madelaine leaned against the polished wood of the front desk and pressed a hand to her corseted stomach, breaths coming out quicker than they should. If she kept panicking like that, she knew where she would find herself. Flat on the floor, aching, not remembering the past hour, and that was only if she didn’t end up dying from a stray bullet or pane of broken glass.

“Get yourself together.” She exhaled as slowly as she could. “Get. Yourself. Together.”

The moment ‘together’ left her lips, two things happened. She slammed her fist down onto the counter to bolster herself and another gunshot rang out, forcing every bit of air out of her lungs.

Madelaine tucked down low enough that she could barely see over the windowsill and out into the street. A horse without a rider galloped past the hotel trailing its reins. A woman and a man crowded the doorway of the general store across the way, the former standing behind the latter and clutching onto him for dear life. Making a break for it in the beginning rather than the middle seemed like a hell of a good idea, but she didn’t have anywhere to go. Her home was out in the direction of the gunshots. She’d have to circle around all the violence if she wanted to find a bed to hide under until everything was quiet again.

She focused as much attention as she could on the couch that sat beneath the window, on its intricate stitching and the band of dark blue thread that ran around its cushions. So many men and women sat on those cushions as they passed through. They were flatter than they had been when she first perched on the end of one, hopeful for a job and mourning for her father. Everything was thinner. Everyone.

Three shots rang out, one right after the other from seemingly different directions and nearer than they had been before.

With each blast, her nails dug deeper into the grain of the wood under her hand. The pressure sent an ache up to her wrist. She drew her hand away, sucking on her fingertips, staring out into the midday sun through glass clouded by dirt from the road.

Footfalls clattered down the stairwell behind her. She pushed herself up and whirled around to see the man from the bathing room, his trousers and gun belt bunched around his waist and his chest bare, sopping wet, silver hair clinging to the nape of his neck. He didn’t even notice her as he rushed out, reaching for his pistol as he pushed through the door.

The man turned right, anticipating the fight, his hand already on this pistol at his side.

But before he could fire off a single shot in defense, before the hotel door swung closed behind him, another shot rang out.

The man stumbled a few steps back before crashing down onto the floor with a sickening whump. Madelaine leaned over the counter, craning her neck to get a better look at the wound. She watched as he pawed at his chest, blood gushing over his fingers and up to his shoulder. Against his skin, the color was a brighter red than she thought was even possible, but on the dark floorboards, it was black.

Scrambling around to the front of the desk, Madelaine crouched beside his head, not caring even a bit if the man’s blood soaked through the hem of her skirt. It was everywhere now, stretching above his head like a dark halo.

She opened and closed her mouth, reaching for something to say.

What can I do to help you? wasn’t what she asked.

Madelaine stared into his frenzied eyes and asked him, “How many are there?”

All the man got out in response was a watery, “Fu-fuck!” as he clutched onto his wound, fingers slipping over his own skin as he tried to staunch the blood. But there was too much of it. Even Madelaine knew it was too much, even though she’d only ever seen a body.

Unable to watch a man die right in front of her, she stood and hurried to the door, the heels of her boots rocking unsteadily over the floorboards. His choked sobs were enough to make her guts turn to water, but she couldn’t watch it. She couldn’t. Not that the state of Valentine through the window beside the door was any better.

She knew stories about war. She’d been raised on stories from the Civil War, straight from her grandfather’s mouth. He’d been at the Seige of Port Hudson — forty-eight days of fighting and the longest siege in America’s short history. He lost his brother at the Battle of LaFourche Crossing, and his father lost his leg right up to his hip at the Battle of Blair’s Landing. Her father had been thirteen at the time and stuck home with his mama, but he had stories, too, about the bloodshed at home in Opelousas.

In stories, there was death, but there wasn’t any blood. There was tragedy, but she couldn’t hear the screams, only see them on imagined mouths. In stories, she was safe.

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest as she surveyed the main street outside of the hotel. The dirt was darker than mud in places, stained with splatters of blood and viscera. A body sprawled over the stairs leading up to the general store. Another was slung awkwardly over a hitching post, blood dripping from the man’s mouth. She didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t make seeing their dead bodies any easier.

The man gave one last kick; she felt it against the back of her shoe. Then, he stopped struggling.

That was when she saw him.

Coming down the road on the side of a slow-moving carriage was Arthur Morgan. She couldn’t make out anyone with him, but she could see him clear as anything as he crouched beside the carriage’s turning wheel. He stood up, rifle cradled in his arms, and discharged the gun in a puff of smoke. Seeing the act made the sound strangely tolerable. Her heart skipped a beat, but the rush of fear didn’t follow.

Even stranger than that was the fact that seeing him there made her less afraid.

As long as she didn’t turn around and look at the man behind her, Madelaine felt that she would see the end of that day. The thought didn’t occur to her until she recognized the man holding one of the guns.

His attention was focused on a duo crowded behind an upturned bench, their pistols quicker than his own gun. It didn’t matter how efficient he was at aiming, reloading, and firing. They were quicker, and they required every bit of his awareness.

Meanwhile, Madelaine was free to look around, her eyes darting over every inch of the main street as she hid between the door and the window, only visible by a stray curl or a sliver of her shoulder. There weren’t many men left from what she could tell. Two on the front porch of the saloon, one running down the narrow alleyway between the general store and the building beside it.

One emerging from the stables, holding in his arms a mean-looking rifle.

Panic seized her, but so did her nerves. She twisted the doorknob and threw the door open, crying out loud enough for Arthur and everyone with him to hear: “There’s one by the stables!”

A shot flew, and that one wasn’t from a member of the Van der Linde gang. She drew back just quick enough to hide inside of the hotel, gasping when she felt as much as heard a bullet crunch and splinter the wood behind her head. Her hands flew up to her mouth, muffling a shocked gasp. She didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to open her eyes, not with her back to the wall, not facing the man sprawled out over the floor. But she did.

Madelaine opened her eyes to see Evelyn on the stairs, her cheeks streaked with tears. “What on Earth is going on?” she spat out, rushing down to join her and nearly tripping over the man’s arm.

Evelyn stopped short, her dress flying out in front of her, and she screamed. There was no muffling that.

“What are you doing?” Evelyn asked. Her voice ran thin, more like a wheeze than an actual question. She snapped a hand out, her fist clipping Madelaine’s shoulder. “You trying to draw them over to us?”

“What?” Madelaine pulled her shoulder away from a second blow. “Of course not!”

Evelyn’s face pinched when another few gunshots rang out, but Madelaine felt it in her chest. She longed to turn around, to look out of the window and see what was happening. She wanted to make sure Arthur and the others were alright. But she couldn’t, not with Evelyn standing in front of her with an expectant expression.

“I told you to hide,” she said. “You should be somewhere with Viola and Ngoc, not in here where you could very well get shot!”

Madelaine pressed her lips together.

“Go! Get outta here!” Evelyn reached for Madelaine’s shoulders, much in the way that she’d grabbed onto Mister Hughes and guided her away from the door. She could have stopped, could have rooted herself into the ground and not budged, but Evelyn wouldn’t have taken that, no matter how much smaller she was. “Go make sure everybody’s alright!”

Madelaine stumbled over the man’s outstretched legs, but kept herself aloft as she rushed to the hallway that led out into the yard behind the hotel. Her fingertips trailed over the wallpaper, skipping over places whenever she heard a gunshot and instinctively drew in on herself. The desire to turn back around was a potent one, like venom in the blood.

She didn’t have the heart to knock the woman out. Didn’t have the strength for it, either, after everything.

There was no one left in the Saints Hotel save for her and Evelyn from the sound of things. The hallway was empty, with all the doors hanging open. Even the door to the yard was open, letting in all manner of smells and sounds and fearful cries.

Madelaine took two careful steps down into the yard.

In front of her was the small shed where they washed clothes and bedding, where the women took their breaks, where gossip spread like wildfire. To her left, a fence was all that stood between her and the alleyway and the Van der Lindes. Her legs weren’t long enough to step clean over the fence.

But she could climb over it.

Her skirt caught on the pickets’ triangle tops as she did just that. She tugged at the fabric, ripping through the band of buckram around the hem. It was already sodden with blood; she had no reason to care. Gathering herself up on the other side, Madelaine rushed around the side of the building and down the muddy alleyway until she stepped out into the sun.

Behind the carriage, she caught a familiar flash of red.

Not blood, but silk.

Dutch van der Linde bowed behind the back of the carriage, lifting himself up to aim shots with his pistols in different directions, at different men. Beside him was someone she didn’t recognize. Bill Williamson was there, too, with a shotgun hanging at his side as he pressed a hand to the thigh of another stranger, one riding in the back of the carriage.

There was a woman, kneeling beside the wounded man, her hair a mess and her face steely despite the absolute madness cropping up around them all.

The men in front of the saloon were dead. The glass behind them, shattered. Even the man she’d caught a glimpse of between the saloon and the general store was dead, laid out flat on his back, halfway sunk into the mud.

A few men on horses galloped forward from either side, blocking the path of the carriage. Their shots hit the ground, the side of the carriage, the buildings on either side of the gang members, but somehow, not a single one of them made impact. The angle was awkward. They had no way of getting at Dutch and his boys.

They had no way of getting at her, either.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Madelaine hitched up her skirt and followed as close to the buildings as she could, hoping the men firing weapons would get more attention from the others than an unarmed woman who just looked dead set on getting away. She hoped. She hoped, and she prayed. There was nothing else to do but hope, pray, and wait to be shot.

If that was the end she found, maybe it was meant to be. Maybe that was the end her father made for her and her mother sealed some years later.

Tucking down against the side of the hotel, Madelaine watched as Arthur and Dutch and the other man — tall, a little rangy, with long hair that concealed most of his profile — riddled the cavalry with bullets.

Their slow ascent up Valentine’s main street slowed when a bullet sank into the ground beside the horses’ hooves. One of them reared back as far as he could in the stiff harness that kept him tied to the carriage. His orange mane caught in the wind, and so did his distraught cry. But there was nothing Dutch and the others could do, given their situation. There was no calming the horse without talking to him, just as there was no talking when people were so busy shooting at you.

“Dutch!” Madelaine shouted as quietly as she could, her throat straining around the unnatural pitch of it. “Dutch, there are five more of them coming from the right!”

The leader whipped around. A warm gust of air screwed up his hair, too, not unlike the horse’s mane but twice as messy. The look he wore on his face matched his disarray almost perfectly. He cocked a thick brow, stalling for a moment to look at her and her terrified flush and the blood darkening to brown on the hem of her dress.

“Focus on them who’s on the left,” Dutch said, just loud enough for her to make out his words. His words crackled, breaking as he raised his voice. “We clear them out first, then we deal with the rest on horseback.”

And then, after a moment of aiming, the four of them let loose a cavalcade of shots that riddled the line of men and their horses full of bullets. Pained screams cast themselves up into the sky. They didn’t echo, not really, but Madelaine could swear they did. She heard every cry over again in her head, and over again, and over again. Whether or not they would ever stop, she wasn’t sure either way.

The carriage continued to roll, pulled by the second horse despite the other’s protestations. Only after they made it to the very end of the street did Dutch turn around to look at her again.

Madelaine didn’t know what he would ask her. She didn’t know if this was a sudden and altogether traumatic goodbye. She thought of the letter, of his desire to see her again, of his warmest regards and the reaction those words pulled out of her. All she knew was that she didn’t want him to leave and never return. She wanted the gang to stay close to Valentine and visit her for baths and a warm bed. She wanted —

Dutch’s voice was beyond hoarse when he called back to her. The sound made her own throat ache.

“Would you be interested in getting out of this shitty town, Miss Madelaine?”

Only a single word touched Madelaine’s lips, and that was a hushed, “Leave?” that was spoken more for herself than Dutch’s benefit. Her fingers curled into the folds of her skirt, and she stood there, caught between impulse and sense. There wasn’t time to hesitate. There wasn’t time to consider her options and her future and her life. The carriage sat at a fork in the road, and armed men on horseback approached.

Valentine was a nice enough town. She had a small home, a small bed, and a small existence, which was a far cry from her life back in Louisiana. The life of a camp follower would be an even farther departure from what she knew before.

But something inside of her gave an answer before she could.

She took one step forward, then another, then she lowered herself down as she ran through the muddy streets to catch up with the rest of them. Every breath ached, but that didn’t stop her. Nothing would. Not even logic and the promise of safety could put her in her place.

Arthur turned to regard her as she caught up. He looked more conflicted on the matter than she did. The others didn’t take much notice of her at all. They were too busy watching the road, aiming their sights on the men cutting a set of curving lines down the street to avoid being shot at with any amount of accuracy.

“Bill, carry Herr Strauss to Arthur’s horse,” Dutch began once she arrived, taking up the small space between him and Arthur. There was an air of chiding in his voice, as if he was punishing an unruly child. “Then take Charlotte with you.”

Charlotte, she noticed, wasn’t all steel and elegant corset boning. Her cheeks were damp with tears, and her hand trembled over the graze on Strauss’s thigh, fingers damp with blood.

“Follow me around the side of the carriage once we reach the stables,” Dutch continued, letting six spent casings fall from his revolver’s cylinder and onto the mud. He slid six more cartridges in with his thumb as easily as breathing. He didn’t even have to look at the gun as he refreshed his ammunition. “We get on our horses, and we ride as far as we can away from this town and from the camp.”

Bill cleared his throat, tucked his shotgun into the long holster riding at his hip, and reached for the man stowed in the back of the carriage. “Sounds like a plan, Dutch.”

Herr Strauss paled even farther and let go of a mewling sob as he clung onto Bill’s broad shoulders. Then, he cursed. Madelaine didn’t speak a word of German, but she knew what a man sounded like when he cursed.

There were four horses hitched beside the stable. She only recognized one of them as Amaranth, but could tell who rode the others just by the look of them. There was a massive horse with furred hooves that had to be Bill Williamson’s, and the beautiful pure white horse had to be the one Dutch rode. So, that left the last to the man she didn’t know.

He looked down at her as they began moving backwards, curious more than critical. A set of still-healing claw marks across his cheek made hers tingle out of empathy. She’d never set her eyes on anyone who looked more like the typical outlaw than him.

“John? This is Miss Madelaine Vallières.” Dutch closed a hand over the man’s — John’s — shoulder. “She’ll be riding with you.”

“I hear ya.”

The tendons on the back of Dutch’s hand stood out against his skin as he gave John’s shoulder a squeeze, not yet ready to let go of him. “Make sure she is secure in the saddle before you leave, won’t you?”

Every time a gunshot rang out, Madelaine felt her heart skitter like a frightened dog. It didn’t matter where she was. It didn’t matter if being with Dutch and his gang meant she was safer — or if she was surely going to die. It didn’t matter because her heart hammered at the same pace, regardless of where she was headed.

John was a skinny thing, but he lifted her easily up onto the horse’s back once he was in the saddle. He asked her three times, rapid-fire if she felt steady, and she answered three times that she was, just as quickly. She clutched onto him, her cheek pressed against his back, feeling the horse begin to move off.

At first, it went slowly. John twisted on the saddle and fired a shot that knocked a man clean off of his horse. She felt the tremor all the way through his body. Then, moment by moment, John coaxed his horse into a faster pace.

Madelaine liked horses, but riding one out of a firefight was different from riding around a paddock.

Still, she forced herself to keep her eyes open. She refused to squeeze them shut and let the ride happen to her, not when a passing field of wildflowers or cluster of trees might be the last thing she ever saw.

“Madlin, huh?” John called back to her, somehow managing to split his attention between reloading his gun, steering his horse, and keeping an eye on the riders who trailed them. “You from here?”

“Ma… Mad-uh-lain,” she corrected him. The horse let itself be turned off of the road and into a rolling field, galloping through grass tall enough to slap at the soles of her boots. A shot whizzed by them, catching her skirt rather than her leg. The tearing sound forced a yelp out of her throat, and she clung onto both John and the horse more tightly. “It’s Madelaine!”

John murmured her name’s correct pronunciation a few times before leaning back, arm held low enough that she had to duck so he could fire a shot into another of the riders.

“You didn’t answer my question!”

Like Dutch, his voice had a habit of breaking when he raised it above a certain point. Unlike Dutch, John’s was just scratchy, like nails against wood, like a breath of smoke held too long.

“Can I tell you when we’re not being shot at?” Madelaine shouted loudly enough for Arthur to hear. He laughed, tucked down against Amaranth’s neck to avoid another bullet aimed in his direction. “Good lord!”

The ride didn’t last as long as she expected. Dutch’s boys were good with their guns, and the riders who followed them either died or gave up before long. They slowed to a stop in the middle of a sun-beaten field to reconvene before heading back. Even Arthur lingered despite the bleeding Herr Strauss, insisting that his injury was a graze at most.

John slid down from the horse’s saddle easily enough, crushing a cluster of flowers on impact. He turned to help her down. She was ready to do just that when another hand was laid low on her thigh.

She wobbled on the saddle for a moment before looking down at the hand’s many rings and thick fingers and bit of dark hair. Her eyes followed the narrow blue stripes on his white shirt up to his shoulder, then up to his mouth, then up to his eyes. Dutch stared at her, his hand resting just above her knee, a hint of a smile sitting beneath the ends of his mustache.

“You’re a brave woman, Miss Madelaine,” he said. “I have to admit that I was a little surprised by your decision.”

Lifting his hands to tuck them beneath her arms, Dutch helped her down from the horse. He held her there for a moment once her feet hit the ground, likely concerned that she would wobble or fall. She managed to do neither.

“Can I tell you something?” Madelaine asked, palms resting on his arms for a moment before he let go of her. When he did, she did the same, her fingers curling once they didn’t have anything to lay against. “I’m not sure why I did.”

Dutch chuckled at that. He smoothed a hand through his hair, pushing the disheveled locks back into place.

“As humans, some of our greatest decisions are made with no prior thought or consideration. I believe we can all find some truth in that.”

Madelaine rubbed a hand up the length of her own arm, bunching her sleeve a little in the process. She wasn’t uncomfortable, but the way everyone stared at her did tease at her calming nerves.

“We must only be a short ride from the camp,” Dutch continued, rubbing a hand over the mane of John’s horse as he passed. “This area’s mighty familiar to me. You…”

He glanced back at Madelaine to find that she was following not far behind him. Her proximity seemed to surprise him, but the smile he wore said that that wasn’t all it made him feel.

“I think you’ll enjoy our location for the time being,” he said. “There is quite a view.” Dutch tipped his head back and took a deep breath, hands poised high on his hips. “Quite a view. I hope you’ll find it comfortable enough with us, Miss Madelaine. Perhaps even comfortable enough to think of my family as yours one day.”

Arthur shot him a look that she didn’t quite understand. A moment later, she caught a glimpse of John rolling his eyes beneath the shadow of his hat’s brim.

All around them, the afternoon continued as it had since that morning, with no knowledge of what happened in Valentine. Honking geese flew across the sky, white against white clouds. The horses caught their breath and began to roam. The tall grasses parted and shook as small animals ran toward them and away from them.

There was a certain amount of peace to be found outside of the town. The last time she smelled such fresh air, she had been sitting on the back porch of her father’s estate back in Louisiana.

Maybe there really was some truth to be found in Dutch’s kernel of wisdom.

Maybe great decisions could be made on a whim, only trusting the direction your feet carried you in.

There was a lady in Valentine whose father had fallen ill within the past month. She needed a job and claimed she was willing to work hard to earn her living. Mister Hughes would do good to hire her in Madelaine’s stead. That thought made things easier. It made her stop worrying about how Evelyn and Viola and Ngoc would get on without her.

Madelaine trailed behind Dutch as he moved between his men, checking up with them to make sure no one else had gotten hurt in the firefight. Miraculously, no one had. No one except poor Herr Strauss whose face was streaked with sweat and tears.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Madelaine said, taking a folded up handkerchief out of one of her front pockets. She wiped his skin dry and smiled when he shot her a look of utter confusion. “Herr…” She looked to Dutch. He nodded, his hand perched on the man’s narrow shoulder. “Herr Strauss?”

“Who — who are you?” the man asked her, his eyes barely open behind his tear-stained glasses.

“Madelaine.”

Dutch gave Strauss’s shoulder a gentle pat just as Arthur told him, “She’s gonna be joining up with us.”

Strauss nodded, but didn’t appear to fully comprehend what was going on around him. He had to be propped up in the saddle by Arthur, exhausted from the ordeal but otherwise fine. The bleeding had already slowed, if not stopped, and from the look of things, Arthur was sure there was no bullet to extract. Everyone seemed happier for that.

“We ought to get back to camp,” Dutch told them once he’d been convinced that there were no other wounds to tend to. “Everyone’s waiting on us.”

John introduced his horse before hoisting Madelaine up onto the saddle. His name was Old Boy. She didn’t have any idea what sort of horse he was, but he had a lovely enough temperament. She didn’t worry about being tossed off of him, especially not once John was in control.

“Victor'll want to see you once we get there,” he said as they set off in a trot. Dutch rode in the front, and Arthur rode behind. In the middle was Bill and John, though everyone looked alert, like they were just waiting for another gunshot to ring out and knock one of them off of their mount. “Camp doctor. He’s… You don’t have to worry about him none.”

Madelaine curled her arms around John’s waist and settled down, letting the rock of her body follow the rock of the saddle.

“Victor,” she repeated. “And you’re John.”

“Lady, don’t even bother learning everybody’s name.” John’s laugh was low and cracked like a fist through a window. “There’s too damn many of us.”

Madelaine couldn’t imagine how many there were. She didn’t know the first thing about how gangs worked, how outlaws huddled together. When she was younger, she thought they were loners, solitary troublemakers, nothing more than that. But the dynamic between Dutch and everyone else was more like that of a father and his sons than anything else.

“If you’re gonna be my family,” she said, her cheek tucked down against his back as she watched the scenery fly by in a blur of blues and greens, “I want to know y’alls names.”

John didn’t talk much after that. Even when conversation passed between the others, he was quieter than the rest. Dutch spoke the loudest and most often, guiding them through different subjects as cleanly as he possibly could. He was a wonder. The last time Madelaine came across anyone who spoke like him, they were a politician.

If outlaws could be kings, Dutch van der Linde would wear a crown.

Before long, they included her in those conversations. Bill asked her where she was from, which answered John’s earlier question before they even reached the camp. Arthur asked her if she was faring alright after all that happened in town. Dutch swore they’d keep her safe, keep her fed, keep her happy. He said that as long as she did her part, there would always be a place for her with them.

She was too tired and too overstimulated to be wary about how quickly all this fell in line. Did Dutch actually trust her, after only a few baths with a few lingering looks? Or did he have some other reason to bring her along?

The road wound between hills and lines of trees. Forests were thicker out that far from town, dense enough to block out most of the sunlight. It left the shadows cold, even well into the day. When the road forked between forward and left, everyone guided their horses left beneath a fallen tree and deep into the thick of it.

Madelaine’s eyes followed the path up as far as she could, catching a glimpse of a canvas tent and a few hitched horses, but little else.

“Who’s out there?” The voice that carried through the trees was rich and feminine. She couldn’t see where it came from, no matter how much she shifted on the saddle. “Come on. Answer me quick!”

“Dutch!” the leader called out, slowing his horse as they wound up the path. “We return mostly unscathed and very much in need of a meal.”

A woman with golden hair and shoulders covered in freckles parted between two of the trees, a rifle held in her arms. She had a cute up-turned nose and a serious look on her face that didn’t last too long when she watched them pass.

“Who’s the lady?” she called out, one hand lifted to her mouth so her voice would carry even farther.

“You will be introduced to her once your watch is up, Karen.” Dutch laughed; the sound was brighter than Madelaine had ever heard. Being near to camp brought out something in him, made his light burn a little hotter. “Don’t you worry.”

They arrived to little fanfare. They received the occasional wave or tip of the hat, but otherwise, everyone went on about their business. Only two people approached them — a woman with long, red hair and the man she assumed was the camp doctor John mentioned. He was on the shorter side with tawny brown hair that had a curl to it. Like Strauss, he wore glasses and a concerned look as Arthur helped him guide him down to the ground off of Amaranth’s back.

Madelaine watched him take most of Strauss’s weight onto himself and felt John shift on his saddle for a moment before climbing down off of Old Boy and hitch him quickly to one of the rough wooden posts. Madelaine slid deeper into the saddle as John rushed over to Victor in order to help him with the limping man, throwing one of his arms around his neck and supporting his back with the flat of his hand.

She might have protested to being left on the horse, but she didn’t have the time. He was gone in a flash, like he’d forgotten there was someone else on his horse the moment he saw the doctor.

“Ah…”

Looking between John and Arthur and Dutch, she saw that they were all busy. Arthur was distracted by an older gentleman who sat not far off, a book open in his lap. John was gone, nowhere to be seen. And Dutch… Dutch stood close to the red-haired woman, his hands cupping her round cheeks as she smoothed down the fabric of his bandanna. She looked concerned, too, almost frantic, but whatever he said seemed to pacify her.

Madelaine lifted one of her legs in order to bring it over to the other side, poised to slide off at the lowest point of the saddle. She took a deep breath before sliding herself off of the horse to drop onto the ground with a quiet oof.

The heels of her boots sank into the muddy ground on impact.

“Good lord,” she exhaled, smoothing her hands over her skirt and over her blouse and over her hair. Then, she shifted on her feet, working her boots out of the ground, and caught Old Boy staring at her with one of his large, brown eyes. “Somethin’ I can do for you, monsieur?”

The horse gave his head a shake, tossing his reins.

Dutch moved around the hitching post to face her, his arm pulled around the woman’s waist. She leaned into him, the delicate fingers of one hand curled against his side.

“Molly, this is Miss Madelaine Vallières.” He gestured towards her, then brought his hand back to rest on Molly’s shoulder. She watched as his thumb rubbed a gentle path over the seam of her jacket. “Miss Madelaine, this is Molly O’Shea.”

Molly’s smile was a small thing, but pretty. “It’s a pleasure to meet ya.”

“The pleasure’s mine, ma’am,” Madelaine said, the heel of one of her boots still stuck into the mud. She did her best to work it out without drawing attention to her predicament. “I hope I can help y’all around here. This all happened kinda quick. I didn’t expect to be here when I woke up this morning.”

A moment of quiet passed between them, almost but not quite awkward.

“Is she the woman from the hotel in Valentine, Dutch?” Molly tilted her head to look up at him. Her smile grew even smaller. “I remember you mentioning her once or twice in passing.”

Madelaine’s brows shot up. She finally managed to tug her heel out of the ground, stepping to the side to avoid treading through any more mud. The vantage point was the same. Even there, she could watch Dutch rub a hand over his chin as he considered his wording. Both she and Molly stared at him expectantly.

“She is indeed the woman from the Saints,” he said. Where Molly’s smile disappeared, Dutch’s grew twice as big. “She saved our skin back in Valentine. We might have lost someone if she hadn’t called out the location of a rifleman.”

Arthur stepped up beside Madelaine, fussing with something in his satchel as he did. “Miss Madelaine’s a good woman,” he said, as if she needed everyone to speak up for her at least once before she could become a member of the gang. “I wager she’ll do a lot for us ‘round the camp. She’s got stories, too. Knows how to keep things real well and clean.”

Madelaine rubbed at a flushed cheek. “Thank you,” she said, though her eyes were still torn mostly between Dutch and Molly.

“Oh, it’s no problem at all,” Arthur said, latching his satchel before patting her on her shoulder. “Follow me. I’ll introduce you to Miss Grimshaw.”

Another name. Madelaine formed it on her lips without making a sound.

Dutch, Arthur, Bill, John, Charlotte, Strauss, Victor, Karen, Molly, Grimshaw. There were more from the looks of it. The camp was bigger than she anticipated, covering almost every inch of a wide clearing that overlooked a canyon.

Never before had Madelaine seen such a stunning view, not since leaving home. Her life in New Hanover had been nothing but a train ride to Valentine and a few years in a dusty town of less than a hundred folks. There wasn’t much to do, and there was even less to see if you didn’t count the men and women traveling through.

As she passed beside Dutch, she hesitated, half-expecting him to not say a word to her. There was no reason for her to expect anything out of him. They didn’t have anything going, just idle flirtation and a few long looks and a hand on her knee.

But he reached out, that same hand curling around her wrist beneath the worn lace that banded around her sleeve.

“Welcome home, Madelaine,” Dutch said. “I do hope you find a place here.”

Strangely enough, as she turned away from him and hurried to catch up with Arthur as he cut a path through the campsite, she felt as if she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank y'all so much for all the interest and kind feedback I've gotten for this fic. It went from being a diversion to a passion project pretty quick, so the fact that I'm not just shouting into the void really means so much to me. ♡


	8. Juniper III.

After what happened in Valentine, Miss Charlotte started asking around the camp for someone to teach her how to shoot. There wasn’t nobody willing to take her up on that, but Hosea did offer to teach her something. Juniper had a bowl of stew in hand while she watched that transpire — Charlotte with an edge of desperation in her voice, and Hosea with his brimming in understanding.

They all sat around the campfire. Hosea was perched on a stool, same as Charlotte, while Juniper stretched out on the dry ground beside Lenny, who slept as hard as a rock after keeping watch most of the day.

“See here, Miss Glanville,” Hosea began, reaching out with both hands to take one of hers. “In a few days time, I’m heading out of camp with Juniper over there for a job. It’s bound to be a simple affair, but you could join us. There’s no better way to teach than by doing.”

Juniper shoved a spoonful of stew into her mouth to keep from saying anything stupid. She watched as Charlotte’s spine snapped up into a manicured line.

“What sort of job?” she asked, quiet as a mouse over the crackling fire. “I’ve never—”

Hosea gave her hands a pat. “Don’t you worry none about experience. It’s just a stage, and it’s not carrying anyone special, neither.”

Word filtered into camp from elsewhere about a stagecoach that headed through Strawberry from Blackwater. Whether that stage would be carrying money, information, or nothing but bad luck, they had no way of knowing. But it was a safe enough job for someone without their history. If Hosea hadn’t been certain of that, he’d have never offered to take her.

No more than a day and a half later, just as the sun was coming up, Juniper, Hosea, and Charlotte headed out from Horseshoe Overlook and turned west. Toffee was feeling like herself again, eager to stretch her legs, but June knew better than to rush off with Hosea and Charlotte both on Silver Dollar. The poor woman had to ride side-saddle, too, since there weren’t a man or woman in camp who had trousers that could fit her and she didn’t want to butcher a slit into her skirt.

New Hanover had its sights, but West Elizabeth looked like it was plucked right out of some fairytale with all its tall trees, winding dirt roads, and ragged cliff faces. Even the air felt different — dewier, like you could taste it as much as smell it, and every breath was cleaner than the last. She even caught Charlotte glancing around once or twice, taking in the sights with an expression that was almost awed.

It took all of half an hour for Hosea to start humming a tune. He only knew bawdy songs to Juniper’s knowledge, and he didn’t want to sing none of them with Charlotte clinging onto him for dear life.

Neither of them were wise to how easily Charlotte caught onto that until she raised her voice above the hoofbeats to ask, “Do you know any songs fit for a lady’s ears, Miss Juniper?”

June’s laugh was more a bark than anything. “Even if I did,” she cast back over her shoulder, “you wouldn’t want to hear me sing none of them! I’ve got a voice like a tin can, I’m afraid. And even that’s doin’ a disservice to the can.”

“Your singing voice is lovely,” Hosea cut in. “Maybe it’s not to everyone’s taste, but neither is mine.”

A heat rushed up the back of Juniper’s neck that didn’t have anything to do with the sun. The horses tramped down through a shallow stream, kicking up all manner of cold water mixed with mud, and they rushed on once they reached the other side. There was little more important on a ride like that one than keeping a steady pace. Slow down too much and picking up speed would be almost impossible, dragging the trip out for much longer than expected. Go too fast, push too hard, and you could just as easily break a horse or its rider.

“Can you sing, Miss Charlotte?”

If there was one thing Hosea knew how to do better than anybody in the outfit, it was shifting the object of conversation to avoid any unpleasantries. Pushing people wasn’t the only way to get answers, and it sure as shit wasn’t a way to make friends. Seeing as they were going to be traveling with Charlotte for a good, long while, they might as well make a companion off of her.

“Of course I can sing,” was Charlotte’s response, a little strained and a little stilted from the lurch of riding. “I took lessons.”

Forgetting that Miss Charlotte Glanville was a certified Lady was impossible with the way she carried herself and the way she spoke. There was grace in every footfall, provided she hadn’t just climbed down off the back of a horse. And her voice! Lord, her accent was clear and crisp and unlike anything Juniper had ever heard. The fact that she could sing besides didn’t surprise her none.

Hosea made a pronounced thoughtful sound, loud enough for everyone to hear above the beating of their horses’ hooves. “Would you sing something for us, then?”

“Sing?” Charlotte’s voice went up sharp as Silver Dollar crested over a hill. “On the back of a horse?”

“What’s the use of a song if it can’t be sung everywhere?” Hosea asked her. June could hear the gentle pressure in his voice; he knew it wasn’t time to step back completely. Not yet. “On the back of a horse, too!”

Not a moment later, June heard Charlotte clear her throat, heard her hum a trail of notes that pitched high and low and back again, and then, she proved that you could, in fact, sing plenty nice on the back of a horse. Just as Hosea insisted was possible.

Charlotte was a lady, sure, but she didn’t back down from a fight, neither.

Her song was a pretty thing, just like you’d expect. Some places were as uneven as the path they rode on, but others made June feel like she was floating rather than sitting astride Toffee’s saddle. She’d never met someone who claimed they could sing well and then proved that they could. She was used to the men and women at camp, who just sounded like dying cats most of the time.

Hosea’s singing voice was nice enough when he wasn’t trying to show off, but Charlotte made a show of well and truly eclipsing him without even trying overmuch.

Even the lyrics in the song were soft.

Kiss my lips, and softly say: “Joy, sea-swept, may fade today; love alone will stay.”

Considering all the saloon ditties Juniper was used to, hearing her was like sitting in a cushioned seat at the opera house. Not that she’d ever been to an opera house, or sat on one of their cushioned seats. She just assumed that it felt a similar way.

“See that, Hosea?” Juniper said once Charlotte was finished. “That’s proof positive there ain’t nothing lovely about what comes outta my mouth.”

Hosea laughed, but said nothing. Instead, Charlotte spoke up.

“I had a tutor for six years,” she told her, sounding strangely defensive from where she sat crowded against Hosea’s back. “Singing is a practiced skill, Miss Juniper. Would you ever had someone your pistol and expect them to know how to use it without being taught? Hardly.”

“She does have a point, June.”

Juniper flashed them a good-natured grimace over her shoulder and kept riding. Of course Charlotte was right, but she didn’t have to take everything so seriously. There was nothing wrong with teasing, nothing wrong with talking bad about yourself for a laugh. They were all good at that; Hosea was just posturing in front of the new woman, acting like he wasn’t just as guilty of it as the rest of them.

“Maybe we should focus on something ain’t singing,” Juniper shot back. Her shoulders heaved in a sigh that hit the air with a puff of gunpowder. “Like the stage we’re set on robbing.”

Hosea didn’t take the bait. He never took the bait. “We’ll get to that in time,” he told her, sounding as even keel as she’d ever heard him sound. “We have quite a ride ahead of us. Better to discuss that once we’re there.”

They rode for hours, passing over the Dakota River and around Diablo Ridge until they found a path that would lead them straight to Strawberry. Every time they passed into a new area, June swore that one was nicer to look at than the last. And while she preferred the flatlands out west, there was something special about West Elizabeth. You couldn’t move five feet without being able to reach out and touch the bark of a pine tree. They crowded the paths, their branches heavy with dark green needles like little fingers searching for something to grab onto.

June tied her hair back away from her face when they moved into pine territory. The snap of a pine branch was enough to draw blood, if not knock someone silly. She saw Charlotte tuck up even closer against Hosea’s back as the path grew narrower and more treacherous.

Only when they reached something of a clearing off a ways from the dirt road leading through the hilly terrain at the foot of Mount Shann did the subject even come up again. With Silver Dollar and Toffee hitched to two different pine trees, Juniper set about kicking up a fire while Hosea tended to Charlotte. The poor girl had all manner of pine needles stuck in her hair, and the bottom of her skirt was heavy with dirt from the road.

Not far off, they heard the rustle of a squirrel or jackrabbit rushing over grass and old, fallen leaves. Charlotte’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, likely expecting some mean creature, only to have Hosea rest a gentle hand on her arm.

“Now, the first lesson I can think of teaching you is that the outcome of what happens today — and any day that you decide to accompany us — is out of your hands. The only way to be sure of anything out here is at the end of a gun,” Hosea told her, stretching out a bedroll for them to sit down on while they watched June gather up enough fallen sticks and branches to conjure up something of a campfire. “I’d prefer that it didn’t come to that, but I don’t want you feeling guilty if this doesn’t go to plan.”

Charlotte stared at him, her lips parted, as if he’d just handed her the world’s secrets. “And the… second lesson?”

“A man will always let himself believe that a lady is in distress,” Hosea told her. He laughed, rubbing his hands over his knees as he sat with them bent in front of him. “That’s how our Karen has earned her take since she was half your age. You’ve got that same potential.”

Juniper couldn’t help but chime in, still blowing on the fire until it caught.

“Long as the lady’s soft and all.” She looked up, ginger braid curling over her shoulder. “Good luck getting a man to think you’re in any kind of trouble if you’ve got a mean look about you.”

Hosea shook his head. A smile rode on his narrow-lipped mouth.

“That isn’t entirely true,” he continued as he gestured in June’s direction. “In the right lighting, with the proper costume, Juniper here would look downright waifish. There isn’t a thing that would stop any man worth his salt from helping her back up onto her feet. Not even if he was traveling with his wife.”

Juniper blew out a snort that was almost hard enough to put out her fledgling fire.

“What can I do if I believe there’s something wrong?” Charlotte asked quietly, her fingers curling and uncurling around the band of dark blue linen at the bottom of her skirt. Her brow cinched up in a frown. “Do I only have my good sense to rely on?”

“Your good sense,” Hosea told her. “Your luck. Us. You don’t need a pistol strapped to your hip in order to exert control over a bad situation.”

Juniper pushed herself up onto her feet from where she’d been crouching beside the growing campfire, her mind more on the cans in her saddlebags than Hosea’s lessons in conning. He tilted into Charlotte, his voice low and gentle as anything. Even a few feet away at the horses, she couldn’t hear a word of what he was saying. All she saw was Charlotte blinking up at him, stuck between impressed and confused.

There wasn’t a man on God’s green Earth who was softer with women than Hosea Matthews. Even the ones tough as jerky, like her and Grimshaw.

He spoke to them kindly, reached out to them when all the other men were distracted or uninterested. June knew he was a good teacher for Charlotte; she couldn’t imagine the poor girl learning anything from the likes of Bill or Micah.

As Hosea spoke to Charlotte, he began plucking the pine needles from her hair and casting them aside. She ducked her head, and the high bun swayed forward, even pierced as it was with those leaves. Rather than paying too much mind to the color in her cheeks or the way Hosea dipped down to meet her eyes, June rummaged around in her saddlebags for a few tins of something that Charlotte might find palatable. Strawberries, maybe. Corn. She grabbed the cloth-wrapped venison from that morning and a few bread rolls to go along with it.

It was a veritable feast, for damn sure. Whether or not they’d eat it all would remain to be seen.

June approached the small fire with one of the rolls already stuck between her teeth.

“No matter what happens, Charlotte,” Hosea continued. Even from a distance, Juniper could see a sweet glimmer of certainty in his eyes. “… You will always have one of us at your back. I hope you can act with confidence, knowing that.”

Settling down beside the fire, June pulled out her knife and set about opening the can of strawberries. She didn’t expect to hear Charlotte suddenly brimming with enthusiasm rather than fear, but she didn’t think she’d sound so damn hesitant, either. Her voice was small as she murmured a non-committal, “I can try.”

Which was about as anxious a start to a meal as any.

Charlotte dined on mainly tinned strawberries and half a roll. She used the bread to sop up all the juice left in the can. Juniper split what remained of her own roll in two with her hands and made a sandwich of that and the venison. And Hosea focused most of his attention on the corn, though he did take a few forkfuls of venison when June offered them to him.

They ate quietly. Only when the remains of the meal were cleared away did anyone speak up about something of any consequence.

“This stagecoach we’re waiting for,” Charlotte began. She wiped her hands down with the handkerchief she always carried — white, fringed with lace, stitched with a simple, dark blue CL. Charlotte Lee, for her late husband. “You said the trip began in Blackwater. I’ve heard a few of you mention Blackwater before. Is there… bad blood there? Is that why we’re going after this stagecoach in particular?”

Juniper’s eyes snapped up to Hosea, quick enough for Charlotte to not notice the change in the air.

She was too new to the gang to know the first thing about what happened in Blackwater save for what she heard through murmured frustrations and even more softly-spoken concerns about Dutch. There wasn’t a person in camp whose mouth didn’t frown around the town’s name.

“The fact that the coach is traveling through Blackwater doesn’t matter.” Hosea picked around his words carefully, like a man trying to avoid pressing his fingers into a bruise. Everyone wasn’t just whispering; everyone was sore about it, too. Even June, who did her best every day to stay out of Dutch van der Linde’s business. “This was the lead we received, so it’s the one we’re going after.”

Charlotte bobbed her head in a nod, but didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“What time is it?” Juniper asked, rocking back on her heels to push herself up from a crouch.

The pocket watch Hosea pulled from his vest glinted in the sunlight that filtered down through the canopy of branches stretching out above them. It was a fine piece, with a fine filigree cover and hands that never even slowed. “Just about noontime. You should get going.”

“Where is she going?” Charlotte didn’t sound the least bit concerned, but she did sound curious. It was a step in the right direction.

Hosea tucked his watch back into his vest. “Juniper is going to Strawberry in order to get a read on the coach’s passenger,” Hosea explained as June turned and headed in Toffee’s direction. “We have a…” He made a quiet sound in his throat. “We have a friend who was in the area, as well. Around the time we learned about the coach, we learned he got himself thrown in jail, too.”

The quiet venom that crept into Hosea’s voice when he talked about Micah was almost enough to make Juniper snort out another laugh. Almost. What it did make her do was crack a smile.

“Yeah, gotta make sure our friend doesn’t get himself hanged.”

Friend was a warm word for what Micah Bell was to most of the Van der Lindes. He had yet to cross Juniper in any way that would make her hate him twice as hard, but he carried with him a feeling that set her teeth on edge. He was just as likely to snatch them right out of her gums for a few dollars, anyhow.

Tucking her boot into Toffee’s right stirrup, Juniper hoisted herself up easily onto the saddle. The horse pawed at the ground beneath her hooves, clearly more than ready to be off, and June couldn’t have agreed with her more.

“I’ll only be out an hour or two, at most,” she said, more for Charlotte’s benefit than Hosea’s. He knew how quick she was on the back of a horse; he didn’t need or expect any clarification. Telling Charlotte where she was headed and how long she’d take seemed like a good idea, given the woman’s propensity for leaning into her nerves. “It’ll be enough to give you two some time to prepare.”

Hosea tipped his head in Juniper’s direction. “Have a nice ride, Miss Juniper.”

June shifted in her saddle, fingers closing in tight around the reins. Tight enough to force a huff out of poor Toffee, which just made her feel bad as well as flustered. Hosea wasn’t like Dutch. He never called her Miss anything unless he was trying to get a rise out of her.

“Make sure y’all keep the fire burning,” Juniper grunted before urging her horse on down the unbeaten path that ran right into the road that would take her straight to Strawberry.

The comment played over and over in her head as she rode, ignoring the wind that beat her nose and cheeks red as ripe apples, ignoring the trees and their swiping branches that passed overhead. The forest outside of Strawberry was still just as pretty, but there was no shaking the mocking rasp of her own voice at the back of her head.

Make sure y’all keep the fire burning, it said, sounding more like a circus entertainer than her own voice.

Blustering idiot.

Giving her head a shake in an attempt to clear her mind, Juniper split her focus into as many pieces as she could. She kept her eye on the road, but spent a few minutes checking over the pistol that rode in front of her hip and the one that was strapped to her side. Her fingers played over the length of her gun belt, checking that the shells where there and waiting for her. Just in case.

She wasn’t expecting any kind of fire fight, but just in case.

There was her rolling block, too, strapped down where she could easily grab for it in any situation. That one lent her more comfort than the ones held against her body ever could, more out of experience and skill than anything else.

As Juniper grew closer to Strawberry, the road became denser with people and horses and carriages. They all led off in different directions, but at the end of the day, speed lagged behind safety when you had something to do.

Slowing Toffee to a steady trot was as easy as breathing. While the mare was prone to acting out when around other horses, when it was just them, she couldn’t have been more well-behaved.

“Good girl,” June murmured. She ran a hand along Toffee’s powerful neck, fingertips brushing along her mane. “Good thing you’re not hurting anymore, huh? I might’ve had to take another of the horses out today otherwise.”

Well-behaved though she was, Toffee seemed to understand what she meant without needing any translation. The horse tossed her head, nickering loudly, though she never once pushed faster than the trot Juniper had coaxed her into. She did manage to spook some poor man riding past, however. He let go of something between a curse and a squeak. The noise left Juniper hunched over, gripping onto the saddle’s horn and laughing until her eyes burned.

She could hear Strawberry before she could see the first signs — the sound of distant voices and horse-drawn carriages and other indications of life. There was rushing water, as if the town itself was built over Hawks Eye Creek rather than around it.

Pulling around to another bend in the road, June tipped her head — and her hat — back to look up at the sign that loomed overhead. It was made of dark wood and topped with even darker shingles, which made the ‘Welcome to STRAWBERRY’ painted in white stand out bright as anything. The path that led between the two thick columns trickled down into the city itself.

The road was broad enough to ride comfortably, even with how crowded the small town was. Going five feet meant brushing elbows with another man or woman on horseback or riding behind some velvet-lined carriage. No matter how far they were in the wilderness, there was something strangely fancy about Strawberry.

Fancier than Valentine by a long shot.

Juniper followed the path down to the main street only to find that the first building to her right was none other than the jail — a sharp-edged building made of pine. It looked newer than the others in the area, which were faded and raw from all the water in the air.

Hitching Toffee to a lantern post outside, June did her best to run through what she’d heard about Micah from Lenny once he found his way to Horseshoe.

There’d been a fight with the O’Driscoll’s. There wasn’t nothing surprising about that, seeing as Micah liked taking on Dutch’s fights as a way to endear himself to the man. Even if the fight ended with him whistling on a noose.

Dutch didn’t like the idea of someone so loyal to him and his blood feud swinging, so there’d be a fresher batch of trouble in Strawberry before long. They just had to figure out how to get things started first. How to get Micah out, how to keep death from running like water through that not-so-quiet town a stone’s throw from Blackwater.

Juniper pushed open the door without more than the starting stitch of a plan.

Three men turned and looked at her in unison. She saw their faces even before her eyes were fully focused. Frustration bled into curiosity quick enough. She doubted they saw much in the way of women in trousers out in that direction. More than that, she carried her guns and an attitude that said clearly enough that she was not to be trifled with. That one, she learned from life on her own, but only perfected once she met Susan Grimshaw.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted before tossing her hat back on its strings. Looking around, she saw no evidence of a bounty board. There was a board pinned with notices near the door, but no bounties to speak of. Trying to find out if they were on the hunt for Micah was out. They didn’t seem to hire bounty hunters. “Good day to ya.”

Only one of them spoke up. He was on the younger side and wore a wide-brimmed hat, his feet kicked up onto one of the desks that bordered the large space.

“Good day, miss,” he told her. “Anything we can help you with? Y’ain’t from around here, that’s for sure.”

“I’m…” June pressed her tongue to her bottom lip, like she could scoop up the words she needed right out of the air. That didn’t happen. Instead, she settled on the easiest trick a lady could pull, according to Hosea. She didn’t think it had a chance of working, but there was nothing that wasn’t worth trying once. “I’m lookin’ for a man what did me wrong some weeks ago.”

One man looked to another. That one looked to the one sitting behind the largest of the desks, a Sheriff’s star riding on his chest.

“Stole my work horse right from my stables. Pretty little buckskin Warmblood my paw got me some years ago.” Juniper worried at her hands, wringing them even through the leather of her gloves. They didn’t look sold on her story, but they weren’t looking at her mean, either. “Can’t sow any crops without her, you see.”

“Haven’t seen a horse matching that description ‘round here,” said the youngest of them. “Might try Valentine. I’ve heard tell of some stolen horses that were brought to the farrier there.”

The youngest, but not the most helpful.

“Could I at least give you a description of the man?” Juniper pressed, maybe a little bit too hard. She rocked back onto one of her heels and folded her arms over her chest, fingers tucked carefully into the fur-lined coat she wore. “I bet if you’ve seen him, you’ll know by the description. That might be enough to help guild me in any kinda direction.”

The Sheriff leaned back in his chair, scratching at the dark hair he’d tugged over his bare scalp that morning. He didn’t say nothing, but that meant he didn’t stop her, neither.

“His hair was like straw stickin’ out of a scarecrow’s hat,” Juniper began. “I didn’t get a good look at his eyes, but he had whiskers the same color and a nasty scar on his bottom lip, as if he got hooked by someone tryin’ to catch a fish. He was prob’ly somethin’ like… forty? Maybe a little younger? ‘Bout this tall?”

She lifted one of her hands about six inches taller than her, waving it there before tucking it back into her coat.

“Well,” the sheriff began, turning himself back around in his chair. “I don’t know anything about your horse, miss, but I know the man. You might want to reconsider how you keep your barn, if that idiot was able to steal your damn horse right out from under you.”

It was nothing more than an elaborate story, but being talked at like that still made Juniper’s blood boil.

“Fool started a fight out here some days ago.” The sheriff leaned over his work, scraps of his attention turned towards her and nothing more. “Stick around for another week if you wanna see him hang.”

A week. They had a week.

Juniper’s shoulders sank, and she gave a pathetic sniff of her nose, like she was holding back tears. There weren’t none of those, but not a one of those men were close enough to see that. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen. Looks like I’ll be heading out to Valentine anyway. Gonna need a new horse before it’s too late to start planting.”

The lawmen bid their half-hearted farewells, and Juniper closed the door tight before hopping down the single wooden stair and onto the packed dirt below.

Unhitching Toffee and riding out of sight took no time at all. The last thing she needed was for one of them to poke their heads outside to see the poor lady farmer trotting away on a sleek Arabian, catching her in her lie. All that might achieve was getting Micah hanged a few days sooner. The camp might be happier for that, but Dutch wouldn’t be pleased.

With one task complete and another steadily approaching, Juniper let herself breathe. She pulled her hat back onto her head and tucked her braid into the collar of her coat, settling into a slow ride across Strawberry until she reached and passed the coachman.

Sometime soon, Juniper would get Hosea out there on a trip rather than a job. All the rain would be hell on his lungs, but the town must dry up in late summer. He’d like it, she wagered. Seemed like his kind of place. Even the general store had something about it that made Juniper feel a little out of place in her dusty trousers and a coat with a ragged tail.

Toffee’s hooves clopped quietly against the last bridge between her and the coachman, leaning against an empty stage. There’d be a transfer there in some time, and she’d get a good look at the passenger. There was never a person not worth stealing from, but there was always a chance for complications.

Considering they were on Charlotte’s first job, both she and Hosea wanted everything to go as smoothly as possible.

Hopping off of her horse a ways away from the coachman, Juniper passed her time brushing down Toffee and feeding her. Her horse didn’t mind the extra attention. She thrived on it, really. That was her favorite part of getting back to camp — having someone rub her down and get her fed and tell her just how pretty she was. And it happened every single time.

Not half an hour later, June heard another carriage approach. She’d seen more than a few pass by in that time, heading off in all kinds of directions, but none of them stopped at that particular coachman. Not until that one.

She turned and stuffed the bunch of wild carrots back into her saddlebag, climbing up onto Toffee despite the ache starting up in her thighs.

All she needed was a glimpse of the stage to know that the play was bound to change.

Charlotte’s role was bound to change, same as Hosea’s.

And Juniper’s job as back-up with her rolling block wouldn’t be necessary.

A well-dressed man stepped down from the stagecoach, his three-piece suit pressed and untouched by the dust of the road. He curled at one end of his blond mustache before curling and holding out a helping hand gloved in white cotton.

The hand that settled into his palm was small. Not woman small, but boy small. The stranger they were keen on robbing had his son with him, and the boy was no older than six.

Juniper turned Toffee towards the path and dug herself down onto the saddle.

Finding Micah’s location had been lucky enough, but now, they had to contend with a painful lash of bad luck.


	9. Charlotte III.

To hear Juniper tell of it, there was a boy of no more than six inside of the carriage.

Charlotte remembered that age better than most, having important memories tied to her fifth, sixth, and seventh years. They were faded in color, but the sights were as crisp as any. Her father, his hair dark, lifting her up onto his knee so that she could count the sum total of his cards. Blackjack. Her father, laughing while he explained the differences between the suits and the importance of kings and queens. Poker. Her father, chatting with his friends while she chose the cards for him to pass. Hearts.

Every time she conjured up an image of some disgruntled loser shooting him in front of her at such a young age, she fought to shake it off just as quickly. Even seeing him shot at twenty-four would break her, no matter what he’d done.

“If it looks as if there’s no way to avoid violence, we’ll move on,” Hosea assured her as they waited beside the trail, just far enough inside of the treeline that someone passing on their horse wouldn’t notice them. “There may come a day when you have to do something so foul as kill a man in front of his child, but that won’t be today. Not if I can help it.”

“It’ll happen eventually.” Juniper sat astride Toffee, a slender rifle poised across her lap. Her role to play in the robbery was an easy enough one, from the casual way she acted. Or she was just used to this sort of work. That seemed likely with the effortless way she and Hosea worked together. “You’ll do somethin’ that makes you hate yourself, then you just move past it. If you’re gonna be riding with us, it’s a good idea to get that over with sooner rather than later. Gets harder to deal with as you grow older.”

Whatever comfort someone else might have gotten from such an exchange slipped right off of her back. She tugged her arms around herself and watched the road, brows bunched over her nose as she fought against her nerves. They were busy things, tying the winding thread of her guts into knots and leaving her to unravel them with shaking hands.

“Remind me of what I have to do?” She hadn’t meant to sound so unsure, as if she was asking a question rather than telling Hosea to repeat his plans. “So that I don’t forget.”

Hosea stepped up beside her, both hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket.

“Just as the carriage rounds the bend, Juniper is going to fire a warning shot down at the road, a ways away from the stage,” he began. As he spoke, Charlotte shut her eyes and tried as hard as she could to picture the events in her mind. “The road is wide enough that the carriage won’t topple if the horses rear up, which they’ll more than likely do.”

And as the carriage shuddered to a stop, the driver would try his best to calm the horses, but it would all be for naught because…

“Then, you’ll come barreling out of the woods, white with fear, your hair trailing behind you and stuck through with pine needles.” A touch of the dramatic curled around every word Hosea gave her. He lifted one of his hands from his pocket to show her where he imagined the stagecoach being. His hands were long and graceful. His knuckles, broad. His fingertips, wrinkled from the cold. Veins curled over the back of his hand like ropes of pale blue. “You’ll tell them that you’re being chased, but in such a way that you lead them to panic rather than action.”

Juniper chuckled. “There’s a good chance the driver’ll just leap off his seat and offer to help you himself, with his bare hands.”

“It’s true,” Hosea assured Charlotte when she snapped her eyes in Juniper’s direction. “Remember what I told you earlier. That may come into play tonight, depending on the inclinations of our coachman.”

Charlotte nodded and settled back into the scene. She saw herself bursting out from the forest, stumbling over her feet, unable to get a full word out until they all did at once to detail the outlaw chasing her and her father. How the man chased her father down, and she was only just able to get away at the last moment. How she was afraid for him and needed the driver’s help in getting back to where they had been.

And as she did that, Hosea would make his way through the forest at enough of a distance for him to pass unheard and unseen. He’d pick the lock at the back of the stage and empty it of the man’s valuables. Then, just as quickly, he would be gone.

Once he returned to Juniper with their score, she would fire another shot into a nearby tree, just close enough to spook the driver back to his carriage.

“What should I do once I know that you’ve finished? What if he insists that I go with him?”

Hosea pulled one of his pistols out of its holster and handed it to her. The weapon was heavier than she expected it to be, but she held firm despite the rush of ice water in her veins.

“Threaten him,” he said. There was an air of confidence in his voice that she couldn’t miss, as if he knew she could do just that without even the shadow of a doubt. “You needn’t shoot him, but make sure he gets back to his coach and moves on. Under all the dirt and the mess that is your hair, I doubt he’ll recognize you. Not enough to put the law on our tails, at least.”

Threaten him.

Charlotte took in a deep breath and held onto the pistol even tighter, her knuckles bloodless.

She tucked it into the belt she wore, concealed behind her back.

Around them, the air grew more and more crisp as the afternoon waned and made its way towards a sunset. The forest would be dark by the time the coach rounded the bend, before the plan was put into motion, and that would only help them, no matter how afraid she was of her inevitable mistakes.

If everything turned sour, they would escape under the cover of almost-night. They would find their way back to Horseshoe Overlook without worrying about anything lost. No bullets, no men, nothing. At most, an opportunity had slipped through their fingers.

Bad luck, but they would see the next sunrise.

“Alright, June,” Hosea began after a long stretch of quiet. “Time for you to be off.”

Juniper tipped the brim of her hat in Hosea’s direction before tossing Charlotte a wink and winding off through the slender trees. She and the horse moved as if they were a single entity. They moved together, not even so much as disturbing a branch. One day, Charlotte hoped she would have a horse that trusted her so well or that she could ride so cleanly.

Hosea left her not long after, disappearing into the trees on the other side of the road. He cast off his jacket and his vest and any bright colors that might have attracted someone’s attention, leaving him in a dark shirt and trousers. The only bright thing about him was his near-white hair.

Standing a few yards back from the road, Charlotte sucked in a deep breath and shut her eyes, molars clenched to keep from letting it out too soon.

The moment she shut her eyes, she was thrown backwards in time. Eight, almost nine years. She was fifteen and standing behind her father as he played, her eyes on everyone else and him. In between batting her eyes and making a fool of herself, she minded the cards that were played. Counting her father’s cards as a girl became something else over time. And in the end, she was why he could rake hundreds of dollars across the table on any given night of play. She was the reason. It was her.

One night, someone thought they caught her sneaking a look at another man’s hand. Which was utter nonsense, considering her neck wasn’t anywhere near long enough to do such a thing.

Charlotte fiddled with a brown curl and told him, “You should quiz me in mathematics, then. To see if I could even begin to help daddy.”

And he did quiz her.

For the most part, Charlotte answered correctly, but she made a point of answering incorrectly when kings and queens went into play. She fussed and frowned and let him feel superior, and in the end, he accepted that she was a pretty fool.

Her father busted him within the hour.

If she was capable of anything, it was pulling wool over someone’s eyes.

Even if her time spent gambling came to a sudden close at twenty-two. Even if she couldn’t save the husband she hadn’t even wanted. Even if her father and Angelo Bronte and every man and woman she’d ever played hated her.

Even if her paintings didn’t sell.

She could run jobs with Hosea and Trelawny and the others who used their words rather than their guns, though she hoped she could learn how to do both.

In that moment — minutes before the stagecoach was anticipated to curl around the bend — Charlotte made a decision. She bent down and unlaced her boots, tossing them onto the ground. The chances of stumbling were raised exponentially if she attempted to run in heeled boots. Leaving them behind in a forest in West Elizabeth wasn’t the smartest thing to do. She didn’t have another pair with her, after all. But eating a mouthful of dirt and ruining their chances of any kind of haul would be worse.

Her stockinged feet curled into the dirt. She felt an ache on her hips and behind from the ride, but none of that would compare to what she’d feel running down the hill on her bare feet. Twigs. Stones. Ants, even. There was no promise that she would avoid any of those things.

She dug her hands into her skirt, not bothering to check her hair and face after Hosea smeared a bit of dark brown dirt on her cheeks and forehead. Her bun was loose, falling away from the tie in places. She felt that with every turn of her head.

Charlotte felt ready. That feeling was a warmth in her chest. And a fear.

The sound of horses and turning wheels came first, then the quiet urging of the driver, and then the powerful sound of Juniper’s rolling block. She’d never heard horses scream the way they did when the ground exploded in a puff of dirt in front of them. They reared back, as Hosea said they would, but their rigging kept them from fleeing, as did their driver.

She waited one moment. Two. Her legs began pumping before her mind even thought, Go.

The thrill of it all numbed the feeling of the ground beneath her feet. Everything blurred save for a single pinprick of focus — the coachman, with his thick mustache and his look of terror. She could barely hear herself cry out for help. All that rang in her ears was the frantic pumping of her heart.

“Help!” Charlotte screamed, scrambling over an upturned tree and nearly stumbling into the path of the stage. She pushed herself up onto her feet and stared at the driver as if she hadn’t expected him to be there. A tick passed on Hosea’s pocketwatch before relief surged through her. “Oh, thank the good Lord above!”

Her voice wasn’t her own, but borrowed from Juniper. While there was none of June’s natural huskiness, the rest remained intact.

“Please, sir! I need your help!”

Charlotte rushed up to the side of the stagecoach, her every gesture overwrought with terror. With her eyes blown wide and her cheeks flushed, she wagered she looked very much like a victim. She reached up and touched over the curved line of the stage’s seat. The metal was freezing to the touch, temperature exaggerated by just how warm she was from the run.

“My pa and me was fishin’ and some no good trash robbed us!” She pitched herself forward, her expression pinched and entreating. “He was gonna do worse, but I managed to get away when his back was turned. I think he’s gonna try to kill us both!”

“Miss!” The driver looked more startled by her than by the gunshot that stopped him. From inside of the carriage came a boyish whimper and the sounds of a father attempting to calm his son. “Miss, please, there’s nothing I can do!”

Charlotte stared into his wild eyes and believed him.

She knew his sort because she understood them. She empathized. Acting when fear gripped you like that was almost impossible, like pushing through quicksand, like speaking when your mouth was bone dry. The only way to get anywhere with a man like that was to push him harder. Taking a step back would only give him the room he needed in order to run.

Her breath hitched. She wasn’t strong enough to pull herself up onto the seat, but she could get close enough for him to see the tears in her eyes.

“Please. Pa’s all I have. I’ll die if he does, even if that man don’t kill me.”

The driver leaned back and gave his head a shake. “I’m so… I’m so sorry, miss, but there isn’t anything for me to do. I suggest you get to Strawberry quick as you can. Talk to the sheriff.”

Sometimes, when you pushed too hard, you still didn’t get anything.

Panic rolled through her, causing her heart to skitter like a rock over water. There was no way that Hosea was finished, not with all of the luggage piled on the coach. She hadn’t heard Juniper’s second shot, which meant that she had to delay him. Delay him or shift her focus.

There was the gun. She felt the weight of it pressing against her back. Pulling it on him would be simple enough, but if she shot him, even on accident, she didn’t know how the rest of the job would go. How she would swallow the guilt of killing someone who was just doing their job. How she would continue working alongside Hosea and the others if she knew she’d screwed up something so severely.

Charlotte leaned away from the driver and turned instead toward the stagecoach’s door. She opened it with a quiet click and rubbed at her eyes, smearing the black and brown of eye makeup and dirt over her cheek. Tears followed. They blotted out the colors and reddened the whites of her eyes, making her look even more pathetic than she had before.

“Miss?” The father was handsome, with a broad jaw and kind green eyes. “Please, shut the door. My son… I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I just need a ride,” she pleaded with him, sniffing, palming over her face to messily dry her tears. “I just need someplace to hide from that outlaw, sir. Please. I’m beggin’ you.”

He hesitated. The boy buried his face deeper into his father’s coat and said nothing. No one said a word in those few moments. The tension brought another wave of nausea into Charlotte’s stomach, leaving her feeling weak and unsteady.

His lips parted, but no words followed, just another deafening shot from Juniper’s rifle.

The driver cried out and snapped the reins in his hands, and the coach was gone before she could say a word. She jumped back to avoid getting her bare feet rolled over and stared at the back of the carriage as it disappeared down the path, the door of its lockbox flapping behind it, open and empty.

Charlotte watched and watched the empty dirt path until her sight blurred and she sank down onto the ground, shoulders rising and falling with each labored breath.

She stared down at her trembling hands, hoping that looking at them so hard might make them go still. But they didn’t. They just kept shaking like the rest of her until she pressed her hands to her mouth and held onto her jaw tight enough to ache.

Hosea was the first to find her there. He hadn’t been far off to begin with, and reaching her became a matter of importance when he saw her fall to the ground. He reached out for her shoulders, grasping onto them and tilting them back to catch her eyes with his own.

“You did good, girl,” he assured her. His voice was low and reedy. Comforting. Thin. “Remind me to tell you about my first job later on.”

Charlotte gave a weak laugh.

Toffee and Juniper pushed through the line of trees and slowed to a stop just far enough for the latter to have room to dismount without trampling the both of them. “From what little I could hear, you…” Juniper rubbed over the nape of her neck before holding out a hand to help Charlotte onto her feet. It was something of a task, given how heavy she was and how weak her legs were after that ordeal, but they managed. “You put on a hell of an accent.”

“She sounded like you,” Hosea said, more amused than anything. “Just a little bit sweeter.”

June rolled her eyes. There wasn’t a lick of frustration in her voice over what happened. If anything, she seemed a little pleased. Maybe Charlotte had done a good thing by using her as an inspiration.

“Speaking of Juniper…” Hosea turned towards the other woman, resting his hand lightly upon her shoulder. “I have never seen a more perfectly placed shot.”

Juniper ducked her head and glanced away, but smiled. “Yeah, sure.” She didn’t step away from him; she let his hand rest there until he grew tired of holding onto her. “And the take?”

“I have no way of knowing for sure, not until we can get to a fence, but there’s two hundred dollars in bills.” Hosea aimed a mischievous smile in Charlotte’s direction, knowing that she hadn’t expected so much. And she hadn’t. The number was high enough to make her mouth fall right open. “So, that’s a start.”

“A little more than thirty for each of us,” Juniper said with a whistle. “Not bad for a stage.”

Hosea’s hand fell away from her shoulder and rose to situate his hat more firmly on top of his head. “Not bad at all. This means you should be able to afford most of your painting supplies, Charlotte.”

He counted thirty-three dollars out into Juniper’s palm. She folded the bills and tucked them into the satchel that she kept slung over her body. Then, he turned to Charlotte and counted out forty. When her eyes snapped up to his, she saw that his expression was a serious one rather than the distant face of someone who might make such a mistake.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “I hope I’ll be able to pay you back for this soon.”

“You will.”

His voice was kindly, almost fatherly, and Charlotte could hardly believe her ears. She never would have expected to find men willing to care for her in a gang like the one Dutch van der Linde called a family with great sincerity. Arthur was sweet to her. Hosea was helpful. Pearson tucked a chocolate bar into her hand one afternoon after she rubbed her fingers raw, washing clothes. Even Dutch acted as something of a father to her, though he was stern and oftentimes unwilling to listen overlong to her troubles.

Her own father had never cared for her much. He was detached from her upbringing until that upbringing brought her to the gambling tables along with him and he discovered that she had a mind for numbers. Even when his fortune was lost and he was forced to marry her off, he never grew angry with her.

There was no anger where there was no caring. He sent her off without a word.

Charlotte knew that none of them would put a bullet in her father for what he did, but they seemed willing enough to help her gather up the pieces he left behind. Even Bill, whose limited patience with her ran even thinner after the events in Valentine.

Once she found her strength, Hosea helped her up onto Silver Dollar, and they rode home.

What was even stranger than feeling comforted by a group of outlaws was thinking of their campsite as ‘home.’ She hadn’t grown up in opulence, but her father was well-off. They never wanted for anything. Her bed was soft, her hair clean, and her clothing plentiful. It was all a young girl could possibly ask for. But now, she slept on a flat bedroll strewn over the cold ground. Her one pillow was flat. Her clothes smelled of cooking food and fire wood. And beneath all of the pine needles and dirt, she hadn’t been clean to begin with. There was only so much you could do in a basin.

Still, she felt a certain anticipation when they turned their horses towards the east and began to move, no matter the ache that shot up her spine and through her hips, no matter how tired she was.

It took everything she had left inside of her to keep herself upright, clinging onto Hosea’s middle, her face buried into the back of his coat.

If he and Juniper conversed, Charlotte didn’t notice. The only thing she paid any mind to was the movement of the saddle and the careful rock of Silver Dollar’s body. Only once or twice did she feel a surge of worry in her gut as they took a particularly steep stride downward. Hosea was skilled with his horse. There was no doubting that.

By the time they reached the camp, the hour was late and the sun was nowhere to be seen, not unlike the night when she first arrived at the Van der Linde camp. Then, it was Arthur who helped her down from the horse.

Charles was near the hitching posts that day, brush in hand and attention turned towards his own mount when they came trotting in with their riches.

Or, rather, their moderate sum. Still, it was enough to purchase her paints and not leave her in debt to Dutch.

Hosea stepped down from his horse, his gait hitched from doing so much riding. She empathized for different reasons. Her issue was delicacy. His, age. Only Juniper managed to climb down from Toffee unhindered from the ride.

He turned to help her down only to have Charles rest a hand on his shoulder. “Go talk to Dutch,” he said, and Hosea relented as easily as anything.

Juniper only gave her a quiet, “Good work today,” before heading off in the direction of the chuckwagon.

Charlotte peered down at Charles. He was a broad man — broad arms, broad chest, broad stance. She wasn’t worried that he wouldn’t be able to lift her, not after being hefted in every direction by the other men in camp, but the moment of intimacy still left her at a bit of a loss.

Her bare feet swayed over the side of Silver Dollar. She waited for Charles to give her any indication that he was ready to help her down, but she found none.

Was he waiting on her? For her permission, or to know when she was ready?

Charlotte reached out to him with both hands, touching carefully over his shoulders. Her position on the saddle shifted. She felt herself as her body began to slide downward, and then, she felt herself lifted before she fell right off.

He set her down carefully, his fingers resting on her waist for a moment before he stepped away.

Charles’s eyes were dark, even when they were lit up by the camp’s many fires. She thought for a moment of the chocolate bar Pearson had given her and smiled.

Once she realized she was just staring at him and grinning like a fool, Charlotte ducked her head and whispered her thanks. He responded just as quietly with a hushed, “Of course,” before turning away and making his way back towards his horse.

Her eyes fell to his hands as their fingers stretched and curled back in on themselves.

Charlotte touched idly over the place where he’d held her as he helped her down before reaching into the pocket of her skirt. There, she kept the folded cards, and there, she kept the money she planned on using to purchase her paints.

Thinking of what would become of that father and his son once they reached their destination only to find that their money was gone would lead nowhere good. She knew that, and she wasn’t the sort of woman who would put herself through the pain of lingering over those thoughts. Not after all she’d seen back in London — the destitute men who had gambled everything away, the men who died for the debts they found at the tables, the lives that were ruined because of a single card she convinced her father to play.

The life Charlotte found herself in was just another game.

And luck could change with the turn of a card. It would change.

She intended to make sure of that.


	10. Madelaine IV.

Chores didn’t provide Madelaine with any challenge, not after years of working in Valentine. It was the food that gave her pause — the overdone stew cooked in the same blackened pot every day, the cans of fruits and vegetables, the tough rounds of bread.

Pearson never indulged those at the camp. When someone brought in a carcass, he was downright miserly over the meat, the bones, the organs.

Madelaine had grown used to meals at the saloon and at the hotel. Simple things. Fresh corn and fresh beans, chicken raised mere yards away from the butcher himself. And before Valentine, the most adventurous her meals ever got was with spice rather than contents. She was hardly picky, but the duck liver she pushed around with the back of her spoon was almost enough to make her stomach turn.

It was no surprise that Charlotte clung to tinned things rather than trying Pearson’s bubbling concoction.

His pot might as well have been a cauldron.

Sitting down at one of the tables around camp, Madelaine took a hearty bite around the piece of liver. John Marston sat close to her, near enough that he bumped his elbow into her every time he raised his spoon. Tilly sat across from them both, searching and failing to find a subject of conversation to break up the sounds of chewing. She stuffed a mouthful into her cheek and glanced away, chewing thoughtfully.

There was little to say that hadn’t been said the night before, when Hosea and Juniper and Charlotte arrived home with money and information about Micah. She’d never been given an opportunity to meet the man, but from the lukewarm reactions his imminent hanging got from the lot of them, she was grateful for that.

Dutch didn’t seem pleased, however. He stood from his chair with a huff and turned towards his tent, stopping for just long enough to point in Arthur’s direction and tell him, “You’re leaving in two days. Bring whomever you’d like.”

That morning, even so close to the afternoon, Dutch hadn’t emerged from his tent.

Madelaine watched the white canvas and listened for the sound of his voice, but heard nothing. She knew that Molly was still inside, a comfort to the gang leader, an affectionate hand and tender mouth. She had no reason to hate her, so she did not hate her.

No. She envied her.

Dragging her fingers through her hair, Madelaine curled them at the ends and sat there, staring down into her bowl. At the liver, at the reddish-brown mush that remained. She scooped up the last mouthful rather than leaving it there and ate, doing her best to ignore the strange texture and bite of blood that came with offal. Once she was well and truly finished, John stood, grabbing her bowl as well as his.

She stared up at him, surprised… but only for a moment. Two days prior, she’d gone out of her way to stitch a patch onto the ratty old coat he wore after he spent a good deal of time worrying at it with his fingers and complaining about the cold.

There were two good things about washing until your fingers were pruned or stitching until they were bloody. Gratefulness and gossip.

Madelaine’s shock turned into a smile. John nodded and turned away, heading over to the messier of the two water basins to dunk the dishes until they were clean.

“You’re getting along well with everyone so far.”

She looked over at Tilly, still wearing her smile. She did feel like she was getting along much better than anyone had expected from her. While she wasn’t a true English lady like Charlotte, she wasn’t an outlaw, either. Most of them had earned their place in the gang by the time they were teenagers with robbing or killing or even just riding. Some of them saved Dutch’s life. He claimed that was why he brought Madelaine into the fold, but she knew that wasn’t the truth.

Tilly followed where Madelaine was looking, twisting at her waist to glance back at Dutch’s tent. “Even Molly seems to like you just fine. How’d you manage that, I wonder?”

Madelaine shrugged with a single shoulder and rested her hand on her fist. “She seems lonely,” she murmured. “May be that she just wanted a woman around her age to spend time with.” Blowing out a sigh through her mouth, she gave her head a shake. “Mais, I don’t know. I thought for sure she was gonna hate me.”

“’Cause of Dutch?”

Gossip. Lord, it’s everywhere.

Again, Madelaine’s gesture was noncommittal. The last thing she wanted to do now that she was settling down in the camp was make something out of nothing. What she had with Dutch back in Valentine was nothing but a flirtation. That, she was sure of. She didn’t need any convincing, not that Dutch was ready to tell her so.

“He’s got a wandering eye, that’s for sure,” Tilly continued, twirling her spoon around in what was left of her early midday meal. “But everyone knows he loves Molly much as he can love anyone.”

There was a story there, but Madelaine knew that was a story for someone who’d been part of the gang for longer than she had.

“Ladies!”

Madelaine’s eyes snapped up to Sean MacGuire as he settled down onto the chair next to Tilly — a loud, ginger end to their brief conversation. Not that there was any specific question she hoped to ask, any affirmation she longed to hear. In a way, she was grateful for Sean and the way he conducted himself. His bowl clattered against the splintered wood. “Got room for another, do ya?”

“There’s four empty chairs,” Tilly said, gesturing to each of them before reaching for her spoon again. “You don’t need our permission to sit and eat.”

Sean bobbed his head, unwilling to push Tilly any harder than that while she was eating. Instead, his attention shifted to Madelaine. She felt dread creep into her belly. She wasn’t sure why until he opened his mouth.

“Some of us are heading into Valentine today,” he said, thumbing a drop of stew from his bottom lip and sucking it off. The light of the sun shone against the hair on his head and the three days of growth on his jaw, turning it from a flat orange to flame. “Thought you might be interested in coming along, picking somma your tings up while we’re in town.”

Madelaine folded her hands in her lap, the pale-knuckled grip she had on her own wrist concealed by the table. She wanted to go, but she didn’t know if she was ready.

It wouldn’t be long before someone stole all that she had left in the house she kept on the outskirts. Every remaining token she had left in all the world was there. She carried the rest of her memories with her, but eventually, those would fade. Having something to hold in her hands…

“I don’t think I’ll go,” she said, her voice quiet and dry. “There ain’t nothing for me there anymore.”

Tilly made an impressed noise around a mouthful of stew.

“Seemed to me you might be too sentimental to say something like that,” she said as she scraped up what was left in her bowl and licked her spoon clean. “You’re a surprising lady, Miss Madelaine.”

Not surprising, Madelaine wanted to say. Afraid. Sentimental, and afraid.

Valentine had been home to her for years in spite of the memories she had of the place. Valentine was where she learned the first kernel of truth about her father. Valentine was where she lost both of her parents to the same fatal gunshot wound, one months after the other. Valentine was where she’d been groped and man-handled and called after since she was barely nineteen. And now, at almost thirty, those memories filled her up like whiskey in a bottle.

The day Dutch van der Linde asked her if she wanted to go with him rather than staying behind, he took that bottle around the neck and smashed it to pieces.

Going back so soon after seemed… wrong. Some part of her was worried that seeing Valentine again might change her mind.

“I hope y’all find what you need in town,” she said, pushing herself up onto her feet. As she passed by Sean, she gave him a gentle pat on his shoulder. He tossed a wink in her direction before turning his attention back to his meal.

There were clothes that needed mending. The reverend had split one of the knees of his trousers the night before when he turned over a chair upon getting out of it. Jack needed one of his socks darned. Arthur was hesitant to ask anyone to mend his things, but she offered to help when she saw the waist of his pants pulling where he clipped his suspenders.

There were bowls that needed washing. Bedrolls that needed beating.

There was work to be done, but Madelaine walked forward rather than back, passing through the space between Dutch’s tent and Arthur’s wagon. The smell of cigar smoke held in the air. She heard Dutch moving around inside, but with none of the slow, pointed motions of someone who was just waking up. He must have been up for hours, if he’d ever slept to begin with.

Madelaine hitched up the hem of her dress. The blood-stained fabric trailed over yellow-green blades of grass, marking her path with every step until she reached one of the boulders that sat upon the cliff’s side.

She chose the largest of them to lean against, hand to her stomach as it protested Pearson’s stew. Warmth crept in through the layers she wore, from the sun-warmed rock to her skin beneath. The valley that spread out beneath Horseshoe Overlook was breath-taking. There was no prettier sight in all the world, as far as she’d seen.

There was no such thing as a vista when it came to Louisiana. Everything was flat back home. Flat and swampy, with air thick enough to cut through and more mosquitoes than people.

If anyone asked her why she was sitting rather than working, she planned on telling them the truth — that she just needed a moment to get around her bowl of stew and then she’d be back with the other girls, needle in-hand. There was more to it than that, but she didn’t much feel like explaining herself away. Not with Dutch’s tent so close by.

Madelaine tipped her head back and let the sunlight wash over her. She wanted to go back. She wanted her things, and she wanted to see if Mister Hughes and Viola and Evelyn and Ngoc were alright after what happened.

She wanted to stand in the Valentine cemetery and say goodbye to her mother and father.

“Seems like I’m gonna be a crook, daddy,” Madelaine told the puffy white clouds in the sky, no louder than a whisper. “Different kind from you, but still a crook. I might learn to shoot, to ride like I was born on a horse. I might kill somebody one day instead of just washing up clothes and men of different sorts.”

Behind her, the grass crunched. Behind her, there was a voice — rich and raspy and familiar. “I hope it never comes to that.”

Madelaine tipped her head farther back, the curled ends of her blonde hair brushing over the porous surface of the stone. It tugged at a few individual strands, but they were freed easily enough. It was Dutch. There was never a doubt in her mind that it was Dutch.

“What do you mean?” she asked, straightening her back. She smoothed both hands over her skirt and situated her boots on the ground, careful not to dig the heels in too deep.

“I didn’t bring you here to turn you into one of my men,” Dutch told her. He stepped up at her side. His massive shadow stretched out behind him instead of putting her in the cold. “I brought you here because you saved my life back in Valentine, and I am nothing if not beholden to those who are willing to stretch their necks out for me.”

Madelaine’s lips parted, but certain words never touched them. She wasn’t about to call Dutch van der Linde a liar. Not even the implication of that would crop up in conversation between them.

“Anyone with a heart like yours deserves to be free.” He continued without being prompted, his eyes roaming over the valley instead of her. Something about that lent a genuine air to all that he had to say. “We all have our vices. Indeed, some of us have a greater number of them than others. But we are nothing more than men and women, outrunning the world that seeks to tame us. Chain us. Kill us. I believe there is something noble about that pursuit. Do you agree, Madelaine?”

He hadn’t called her Miss Madelaine since the day of that first bath, not when they were alone. He made a show of referring to her that way around others, but that was just for the sake of appearances.

I brought you here because you saved my life back in Valentine.

Madelaine felt her lips twitch into an unbidden smile. There was something there, smoking beneath the kindling. She could feel the promise of warmth radiating off of him.

“You wanna know what I believe?” she asked. She gathered her hands together in her lap and looked up at him, at his profile, at his swept back hair, at the dark circles that sat beneath his dark eyes. “I believe I’m here for a reason. You were meant to be looked after by someone else that day when we met. I was busy doing other things.”

Dutch tucked his chin down and looked at her. Without the sun in his face, he looked even more exhausted.

“A woman who’s been through what I’ve been through betta believe in fate.” She tilted her head, but didn’t look away. Staring right into Dutch’s eyes was difficult, but she managed. “That’s the only way anything’s gonna get better for her.”

“And how does that tie in with you killing a man?”

Madelaine laughed under her breath. “The day fate put me in your path, Dutch, was the day fate put a gun in my hand. I’ll tell you that.”

Dutch’s thick brows shot up. His laugh was so loud and so sudden that it crackled out of his throat in shards. Behind them, activity in the camp seemed to stop all of a sudden and turn towards them, curious. That only lasted for a moment before Dutch crouched down beside her and turned it into a chuckle, rubbing at his jaw as he did.

“I am sure you know by now that those few holding the guns are those that are in the most danger,” he said, one hand poised on the rock beside Madelaine’s skirt to keep himself stable. “Fate seems to have done you a disservice.”

“I’d say that danger doesn’t bother me none, but you know that ain’t true.”

Wind blew a thick cloud in front of the sun. A moment of shadow passed over them, as did a moment of quiet. Dutch stared down into the valley again, and Madelaine stared at Dutch. There was nothing innocent about the man, nothing pure. He was a devil in a dusty red vest, but he’d been kind to her. She leaned too heavily into men who were kind to her.

“Are you ever afraid of those guns you’ve been handed?”

That time, Dutch’s laugh was little more than a husky heave of his chest. “Terrified,” he said, and she believed him. “And of so very many things.”

Madelaine nodded. She didn’t ask anything more of him, even though she wanted to, even though asking would have been so easy. He was the sort of man who stood alone, even surrounded by people who cared for him. He stood as if he was made of stone, and no one asked him what stone was afraid of. Chisels. Rainfall. Time. No one knew.

She wanted to know.

“I heard that Sean is going into town today with Miss Charlotte and Charles.” Dutch navigated conversations effortlessly. Madelaine admired him for that, hoped she would learn how if she stayed close to him. “Were you not interested in going? There must be something you hope to salvage from your home.”

Salvage. The word choice stung, but not as much as the thought of going.

“I’m afraid of what might happen if I see Valentine again,” Madelaine murmured. She turned on the boulder, one of her legs hitching upwards so she could sit more comfortably. “Do you think they might be willing to pick a few things up for me? They could keep anything that looked like it was worth any kind of money.”

Dutch stood and peered down at her, no doubt wondering what it was she wanted. “Just tell me what it is you want, and I will be sure Charles knows by the time they leave.”

Madelaine thought of her house, of her dresses and her pictures, of the small portrait she had of her mother. She thought of it all, but only a few things came to mind that would hurt her if she lost them.

“Daddy’s pistol,” she said, tapping one forefinger against the other. “I kept it in the bottom drawer of the chest in my bedroom.” She tapped her middle finger. “There’s a journal at the back of that drawer, too. It’s stuffed with letters. I’ll want that, too.”

Her mother wrote poetry right up until the day daddy died. Words dried up after that.

“On my bedside table, there’s a pair of reading glasses. I’ll need those, unless I want ta go blind with all this stitching I’ve been doing.”

That brought a smile to Dutch’s face. Madelaine stared up at him, suddenly feeling too aware of her own sentimentality. She was a damned fool for clinging to those things, but the glasses had some use to them. There was no reason why he should smile at that.

“What is it?” she asked, heat rushing up into her face.

Dutch seemed surprised, like he hadn’t felt himself react at all. The smile fell away, but she could hear it in his voice when he told her: “I’d bet you look very charming in a pair of glasses.”

Madelaine blinked up at him. Once, then twice, then three times rapid-fire.

“I, ah — I.” She fussed with the folds of her skirt, though she didn’t look away from him. She had too much pride to look away from him. Not even with her cheeks and ears on fire. Not even with him looking down at her with that mischievous sparkle in his eyes. “They’re just glasses. There isn’t anything special about ‘em.”

Dutch pressed his lips together to keep from laughing again. At least there was that. At least he wasn’t locked away in his tent, fretting over a man no one really wanted to save.

“Is there anything else you want retrieved?” he asked.

Underthings. Another pair of shoes. A dress that wasn’t stained with blood. There were so many options, but she could only think of two more.

“There’s a quilt at the foot of my bed that my mawmaw made for me,” she said, running her palms over the wrinkles she’d made in her skirt from gripping it so tightly. “I lost her some years back, before we left for Valentine, so I’d like to have that. And…”

Madelaine rubbed at her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Sitting on the top of the chest of drawers is a bottle of the bathing oil from Penhaligon’s. I stole one of the unmarked ones to keep for myself back when I stared working there, but never used it.”

Every now and again, Madelaine felt herself surprise Dutch. She felt the air shift between them, felt him reassess how he thought of her. It was a strange thing. No one had ever made her feel such a way. Getting used to that feeling would take time.

“The citrus oil?” he asked.

She remembered the afternoon when Dutch arrived at the Saints for a bath. She remembered their comfortable conversations. She remembered him touching over the back of her hand, his skin callused but soft. She remembered smelling of oranges for hours after, even when she went home and tucked herself into bed.

“That one exactly,” Madelaine told him and watched as his smile dawned again.

Stone could move under the right hands.

She didn’t know everything there was to know about him, but he was teaching her that.

“And if they fetch you this bottle of bathing oil, do you intend to share?” Dutch asked. He took a single step closer to her, unable to wipe the smirk off of his face. She didn’t want him to; the look suited him.

She gave him the truth. “Only with you.”

Dutch leaned in closer, his chest pulled downward just enough to make a marked difference in his posture. For a moment, Madelaine was sure that he meant to kiss her. His lips looked soft beneath his mustache. They were pink and unbroken from the wind.

She wondered what the skin of his face would feel like under her touch.

She wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

In the end, neither of them moved forward. Neither of them took that step. They both pulled back, glances stolen back and forth like birds who couldn’t quite find their wings.

“I really appreciate this,” she said.

Just as quickly, he assured her that there was no problem, that he was happy to bring her anything that might make her more comfortable in camp. And then, he was gone. He moved around his tent rather than through it, headed off in Charles’s direction near the scouting fire.

She watched with her palm pressed tight against her chest. The thump of her heart was almost too powerful. It felt as if she was holding it in her hand.

Her life was left behind in Valentine. Her past, too.

But her future was there with the Van der Linde gang. Her future began as flushed cheeks, a racing heart, and a bottle of stolen oil. Where she was bound to end up, only time would show her.

Until then, she would happily let fate happen to her.

Fate, who turned out to be a devil in a dusty red vest.


	11. Juniper IV.

The worst part about rolling into Strawberry with Arthur Morgan was just how pretty the day was.

Juniper cast her eyes up towards the sky and took a moment to breathe in the fresh mountain air, to stare up at the blue spread out above them and the streaky white clouds. She’d never been in a town quite like Strawberry. Something about the place softened her up inside, warmed her even though the air was sharp and cold. And she knew that her enjoyment of the afternoon was bound to come to a screeching halt once they arrived at the local jail.

Saving Micah Bell hadn’t been her idea. She’d have just as soon left the man to swing, if it wasn’t Dutch calling the shots. Dutch, who spread his wings around just about anybody who was willing to put themselves in danger for his sake.

“So, we gotta do this?” June asked, palm tapping against her saddle’s horn. “No going back, no telling Dutch we was just… too late?”

Arthur let loose a low chuckle and shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

“You know he’s just gonna cause all kinds of trouble,” she continued, as if she could ever convince Arthur to go against Dutch’s orders. Not in a thousand damn years, and maybe not even then. “If we don’t end up shot full of holes, we’ll have a hell of a bounty on our heads. I thought Dutch was wanting us to keep a low profile?”

They took the road that led up beneath the large sign that read ‘Welcome to STRAWBERRY.’ Arthur pulled out ahead of her, and they rode in a careful line to avoid oncoming carriages and the like.

He turned in his saddle, just enough to catch her eye for a moment. There was a hint of a smile riding at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t often that he teased Dutch with someone who wasn’t Hosea, but he had his moments of weakness.

“Dutch wouldn’t know a low profile if it was sleeping in his tent with him.”

Juniper snorted.

Well, that wasn’t one word of a lie. Their fearless leader had a mind for most things, but his inclinations never leaned towards any kind of subtlety. Only Hosea was ever able to caution him, and even that didn’t work most of the time. They were lucky when it did and willing to pick things up off the ground when they didn’t. That’s just how being part of the Van der Linde gang worked most days.

“Maybe we should just hogtie him,” Juniper offered. “Throw him over the back of your horse. Might be that’s the only way we get outta this in one piece.”

Arthur made a thoughtful noise. “Man like Micah doesn’t take too kindly to getting roped up like that.”

“Sure, but… I don’t much care what he likes and doesn’t.”

It was the lack of a reaction from Arthur that told Juniper that even her teasing proposal wasn’t being considered. Everyone’s relationship with Micah was already rocky enough on account of him being a no good piece of trash. The last thing they needed was him taking a knife to them after sundown ‘cause they tied him up and threw him over Amaranth’s rump.

The jailhouse in Strawberry was nothing but brick and timber, new but already beginning to wear under all the rain. Outside, there wasn’t anyone around, despite the nice weather, which meant snooping around the perimeter of the building wouldn’t get them arrested. Noticed, maybe, but not arrested.

As Arthur stepped down from Amaranth and onto the soggy ground, Juniper tossed her coat back to check the pistols on her belt. They were simple weapons — none of the inlays or carved stocks that the other members of the gang carried. She poured her money into her rifle, but she wasn’t going to be using her rifle that day. There was nowhere decent to post up because of course there wasn’t.

Things was never easy when it came to Micah.

They could already hear him cursing and spitting behind one of the barred windows, something about not being caged for long, like he could divine the future like some kind of outlaw prophet.

“Hearing that just makes me want to leave him even more,” Juniper muttered as she hopped down from Toffee’s back and fell into stride alongside Arthur. “There ain’t nothin’ helpful about a man with such a high opinion of himself.”

Arthur shot her a look, brows raised.

“What?”

“Just sounds personal, is all.”

“I just—I got no time for him. None of us is good, but Lord, if he ain’t the worst of us.”

Just as Arthur moved to speak, his lips parted and everything, they heard a clamor behind the bars. Out of the shadow came a single hand, waving eagerly in their direction. “Arthur! Arthur, I’m over here!”

The hand was replaced by a face when June stepped up beside him. Micah wasn’t an ugly man, but she wanted to rip that mustache clean off his face just about every time she saw him. His week or so in the Strawberry jail hadn’t done wonders for his looks aside, either.

“Oh, hey… Sticks came to save me, too.” A grin passed over his face. She’d never seen one of those smiles reach his eyes. “’Bout time you stopped sniffing around Hosea and came out for a real man.”

Juniper gestured in Micah’s direction, staring at Arthur with a look that could best be described as: ‘See?’

“You got two choices here,” Arthur said, cutting in with all the authority of a disappointed father. June pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. He looped his thumbs over the waist of his jeans and stood there looking none too impressed with Micah’s poor showing. “You shut that mouth of yours and get outta there, or you keep talking and we go have a nice meal at the welcome centre while you dangle.”

Micah leaned closer to the bars, his blond brows pinched forward. “Don’t be like that, Arthur,” he said, fingers curled like vines around the bars. He was already pale, but his grip turned his hands white as bone. “All three of us know that Dutch sent you over to get me out.”

“Schedules change.” Arthur leaned up against the wall of bricks, tucking one of his boots up behind him. “Hangings get moved forward, especially if the outlaw keeps running his damn mouth.”

Juniper leaned over, orange braid dangling over her shoulder.

“Hand to God, Dutch. He’d already been hung by the time we got there. Was crows already picking at his corpse and everything.”

Somewhere inside of the cell, they heard a sharp, uncontrolled bout of laughter, likely from the O’Driscoll he’d been held with. Micah turned back around and yelled for him to shut up. Not that it helped.

“You really think you’re worth bringing all of Strawberry down on our heads?” Arthur asked. He put on a good show of sounding almost entirely uninterested in saving Micah’s life, even though Juniper knew he would stop at nothing if it meant getting him out of jail. “Got a real high opinion of yourself, Micah.”

Juniper rolled her eyes. He could put on a show, but he didn’t have to steal her lines, too.

“Come _on_! I know there ain’t nobody in town who doesn’t want to see me swing. We’ll figure this out on the fly, like we always do.”

Arthur pushed himself away from the wall and walked an unsure circle into the mud before getting back to their jailed partner. “Sure,” he said, checking over his pistols and gun belt. “Sure, we’ll figure this all out, but if it looks like you’re dragging us into some kinda mess, you can bet every last dollar you have that we’re cutting you off.”

His act was believable enough, but Juniper didn’t see any truth in it. There was no ending where Arthur Morgan didn’t bring Micah back to Horseshoe, no ending where Micah ended up dead or even wounded. Arthur just wasn’t like that.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure. Just get me out of here.”

Micah didn’t seem to believe him, either.

Freeing a man from behind bars was never an easy task. Lighting fire to a wooden jailhouse wasn’t the most difficult thing in the world, but a building made half of brick? In such a rainy climate? They’d be better off chiseling away at the bars themselves, praying they didn’t get their asses caught.

June’s first thought was, “Dynamite.”

That pushed Micah away from the bars quick as anything. Small victories were still victories.

“You got dynamite on you?” Arthur asked, tugging his coat open and checking his pockets. “I used my last stick some time back and I ain’t found none since.”

Juniper spat out a sigh. “None on me, neither.”

Micah appeared at the bars again, jabbing one of his pale fingers toward something behind them. They turned to see a steam-powered winch not far off, half-concealed by a thick bush. Having one in a mining town made sense. It didn’t seem to be a broken piece of junk, either, which was good.

“Slap that hook on one of these bars,” Micah said, knocking the flat of his palm against them, “and the steam donkey will set me free.”

Distaste shifted over Arthur’s expression. He chewed on that option for a while before letting go of a sigh that brought his shoulders down sharply. “This is gonna be a hellish mess.”

June flashed him a grin, slapping a comforting hand on his shoulder as she used the other to pull her paisley kerchief over her mouth. “Just like setting fire to a stick of dynamite.”

She moved over to the winch and lifted up the hook tied to the end of the thick, bristly rope. There was some give, just enough to let her tug the rope free rather than having to ask for Arthur’s help. He gave her the space she needed and set about looking at the lever. Checking it, making sure it was still in working order. Machines rusted up something awful in a place like Strawberry.

Once she returned to the bars, Juniper pulled the hook over one of them and stepped back, not looking to get smacked by the bars once they broke free.

The machine came to life with a guttering whir and an almost deafening screech. Smoke puffed out of the top as the nonsensical insides began to work. And, just as they expected, the rope went taught as a bowstring. Metal strained. Wood splintered. The thing worked and worked until the wooden frame around the bars finally cracked and flew outward, smashing into a thousand pieces against the body of the steam donkey. Rocks bordering the open window crumbled and fell away, leaving a more-than-man-sized hole in the side of the jailhouse.

Micah planted a foot up on the roughened edge of his escape route and pushed himself up out of it, squinting into the sunlight. Someone attempted to clamber up behind him — an older man, with a gray beard and flecks of brown over the backs of his hands.

He didn’t have the opportunity to call for help or introduce himself, and Juniper couldn’t even intervene when Micah reached out, grabbed the holstered pistol from the front of her gun belt, and pivoted back, blasting a point-black hole into the man’s forehead a moment later.

Screams rose up around them, pitched toward the perfect blue sky in response to the sound of the gunshot rather than them opening up the side of the jail.

“Now, you **must** be crazy!” Arthur shouted down at him, all his bluster replaced with something akin to fury. “What’d you do that for?”

Micah rushed forward and tucked down behind a wooden barrel, looking back at the both of them as the doors to the jailhouse busted open and let loose three faces that were familiar to Juniper. Shame.

“One less O’Driscoll in the world ain’t nothing to cry over, Morgan,” he said, spinning out the cylinder of Juniper’s pistol to make sure it was full. She could have smacked him for second guessing her if they weren’t in the trenches. “You’d have done the same after spending the last week with him. Miserable man. Eats with his hands. Farts in his sleep.”

“The eating habits of a dead man don’t mean nothing to me right now!” Juniper pulled out her second pistol before tucking back behind the stone wall of the jail’s basement. “We need to get out of here.”

Arthur whipped out his guns, too, pushing forward just far enough to get a shot off in the direction of one of the deputies. None of them screamed, so she wagered that it was a shot and a miss, but that didn’t matter. No, not when the second one hit him right in the throat, sending a spray of blood against the carriage he’d been crowding for cover.

“Which one of you am I riding with?” Micah asked. He popped out of cover and squinted one of his eyes, narrowing in a shot that wouldn’t miss on one of the brave civilians who just so happened to get involved. “I got a preference, for what it’s worth.”

“You’re not riding with me,” Juniper gritted out from between her teeth. “No way in **hell** are you riding with me.”

She followed the sheriff with the barrel of her gun only to have him disappear on her around some poor fellow’s porch. There was no sense in waiting around in hopes of getting a well-timed shot when he leaned out of cover. Instead, she finished off the man Micah knocked down rather than just letting him bleed out in the mud. Doing so seemed cruel, even if he had been shooting at them.

Micah laughed. There was nothing she hated more than making Micah laugh. The only time he ever did was at someone’s expense.

“Your horse is as skinny as you, Sticks.” He rubbed his back up against the wooden barrel before popping up again and unloading two shots into another armed civilian. “No way is it carrying the both of us, anyway.”

Arthur clipped the sheriff’s shoulder when they both weren’t looking, causing the old man to stumble out of hiding and get another shot square in the cheek. The impact blew him back, flipping over the railing and onto the mud below. There weren’t many folks working for the law in Strawberry, but there was no shortage of people with guns, looking to cash in on outlaws in the middle of a getaway.

“Get on the damn horse.” Amaranth was big enough to carry all three of them, but that wasn’t necessary. Not with Toffee there. Once Arthur was in the saddle, he reached over and pulled Micah up behind him. “I don’t wanna hear anything out of you. Just keep shooting.”

Everything was a mess, just as Arthur had anticipated.

The weather was nice, but the roads were nothing but mud and horse shit. Abandoned carriages clogged the path they might have used to escape, leaving them with two directions rather than three, and neither of those available to them would be quick _or_ quiet.

Cursing under her breath, Juniper holstered her pistol and grabbed for her rifle instead. She felt like she had two left hands when it came to pistols. They were too light, and they didn’t have the control of something longer and meaner. Now wasn’t the time for her rolling block, but it was perfect for her Springfield. She cradled it against her stomach before situating herself proper on Toffee’s back.

But, as usual, Micah proved to be slippery as a fish out of water.

Just as soon as they moved out onto the road to make their escape, something about his demeanor changed. He looked around, skittish as a hare, before slipping down from the saddle and onto the road, even as bullets flew at them.

“Where the hell are you going?” Arthur called out, twisted around as he blasted the column someone tucked behind into a rain of splinters. “That ain’t the way!”

Juniper swore she heard Micah shout for them to trust him, but that didn’t make a lick of sense. Neither of them trusted Micah so far as they could throw him — Arthur farther than June, but not by much. He had to know that. He had to.

Still, Arthur reared Amaranth up and rode after him, down the street crowded with people still clamoring for their guns or hiding inside of the shops that lined the dirt road. June had no choice but to follow.

They crossed the bridge under no small amount of fire. One of the bullets nearly tore through Juniper’s braid, which would have been just as painful as getting blasted in the shoulder. She ducked out of the way just in time, though, and got that same fellow right in the guts where it counted.

Toffee kept up with Amaranth easily enough. They were trained to keep their cool in situations like that one, under fire and under pressure. They would break before their horses did, no matter how many men were keen on mowing their mounts down.

“I got unfinished business to look after!” Micah shouted back at them, even though neither she nor Arthur had asked. “Juuuust trust me!”

“Stop sayin’ that!” Arthur moved Amaranth around an upturned crate only to blow a man’s hat clean off his head, along with some of his scalp. His voice strained over the sounds of guns firing and women screaming. “Nothing’s gonna make us trust you none!”

Micah laughed again, that same one as before. No one ever said anything he found genuinely amusing from what June understood. He just found some part of what they said to laugh _at_ rather than with. And that was obvious mostly ‘cause no one was ever laughing when he finally got around to busting his gut.

Arthur rode Amaranth out ahead of them both, maneuvering her so that he was mostly shielded from oncoming fire. He took that opportunity to blast holes into men running up from the old wooden houses that lined the street. Everyone in the damn town had a gun stowed in their home, sometimes two or three if they didn’t live on their lonesome. By the end of the day, that’s all Strawberry would be — mud, women, and guns.

She clenched her thighs tight over Toffee’s saddle and hefted up her rifle, scanning the road where it branched off before squinting through the sights. They weren’t as impressive as the one on her rolling block, but they’d do.

Micah let out a loud hoot and a whistle when she all but pinned a man to his front door, the wood behind his head blowing out when the bullet pierced through just above his brow. That wasn’t anything to be proud of. It wasn’t anything to stroke yourself over, for damn sure. She was just trying to keep them all alive.

“I ain’t leaving this town ‘til I get what’s mine.”

He had a thing about being vague as he could without not making any sense. Arthur didn’t give him any of his time, but Juniper couldn’t help but be a little curious. Strawberry was a nice town.

She wanted to go back someday. Now, there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to.

“What are you rambling on about?” June called out to him as she tucked another shot into her rifle. “What’s yours?”

Rather than answering, Micah darted out ahead, his stride wide before he settled around the bend of another building. The cover wasn’t exactly impressive, but it was something. Better than standing out in the sun.

Micah had mud up to his ankles, splattered over the wide legs of his chaps. Some had smeared up his hip from crouching, too. Getting back to camp wouldn’t be the hard part. Getting to their bedrolls without catching fire and brimstone from Grimshaw was another matter entirely. They’d make friends with a cold mountain stream before being let back into society.

“What have they got of yours?” Juniper asked again, louder that time. She coaxed Toffee forward, following the same path that Amaranth had taken. Any other horse might have bucked them both off and left them to hoof it themselves, but not them. They were good horses.

“Oh, you’ll see!”

Juniper screwed up her face in a frown. “God damn it, Micah!”

On the horizon, just where the mountains threatened to pierce the heavens, blue turned to a stormy gray. The color deepened to black in places, and the sky itself was streaky, like fingers through fresh paint. They weren’t just about to get rain. They’d brought thunder and lightning to Strawberry when they rolled into town.

There wasn’t nothing surprising about God not wanting Micah Bell freed from a jail cell.

Juniper snapped at Toffee’s reins and pushed her forward, careful to avoid Arthur’s shot that took down the last remaining man running at them. The frenzy in Micah’s movements eased, and he walked rather than ran at the house at the end of the street.

It was a nice enough building, made almost entirely of wood with a big porch and two dormers poking out of the roof like a pair of eyes.

Micah stomped up the stairs that led right to the front door and… knocked. He knocked rather than kicking it in or blowing through one of the windows, and when the door opened from the inside, June was halfway expecting him to greet the man.

But his ‘hello’ was a pistol to the gut, and the man fell back into the house, stumbling and grabbing for his belly.

“Get outta my way, you fat fuck.” Micah kicked at the man’s scrambling legs before stepping over them. It was too dark to see inside of the house, but Juniper heard him rummaging around. “You know you got something of mine.”

A woman screamed, and Micah laughed.

“He-ey, Maddy.” A drawer slammed shut. Without the gunfire, it was quiet enough to hear him check the cylinder of a gun. “Nice of Skinny to keep these loaded.”

For a moment, June wondered if he was going to shoot her, too, but he didn’t. He stepped over Skinny’s legs again and into the sun, two pistols in his hands. They were beautiful guns, prettier than anything she’d ever done with her own. They were probably the only thing worth saving in Strawberry. She’d have rathered leave Micah behind and taken those back to Dutch.

Neither she nor Arthur said a word about him going above and beyond to recover his guns. They were mightly attached to their own, after all.

Just seemed hypocritical.

Another bridge, another trip over Hawks Eye Creek, and they were faced with another group of oncoming men and their guns. Micah scuttled forward and hugged an abandoned carriage for cover, shots flying, unwilling to back down so long as someone was going after him. There were men who knew when to cut and run, and Micah Bell wasn’t one of them.

Arthur was.

“Get your dumb ass on a horse, and let’s get out of here!” Arthur shouted down at him.

Juniper covered him as he reloaded his pistols, all while moving Amaranth up behind Micah. The men in the area were hunters, not gunslingers, that much was obvious. There were more bullet holes in the sides of buildings than through any kind of flesh. Not that June wanted a real fight with any real danger involved. There was always the chance for a stray shot, for someone to be slammed right into a world of hurt.

“Give me some breathing room, Arthur.” The teasing note in Micah’s voice was enough to make June clench her teeth. “I got people to kill for crossing me. Surely, you understand what that’s like.”

He flashed them a grin before sliding up against the carriage’s side and rushing forward, aiming three quick shots that each landed on their mark. His pistols made a brutal sound when they discharged, like he was carrying twin shotguns rather than something much smaller.

Near the hotel, there were two horses tied to the hitching post out front. One was bucking and keening like it was half-crazed, but the other seemed well-mannered in the middle of a fire fight.

Micah chose that one once he’d had his fun, hauling himself up onto the saddle and turning towards them.

It was his horse — Blaylock, an all black Missouri Fox Trotter with a white face. There was no telling how long he’d been out there, tied to the hitching post, but he was happy to be riding again, happy to have Micah on his back. No wonder he’d been so calm; he’d likely seen and heard a hundred times worse while traveling with him.

Juniper pushed Toffee on ahead. She was the fastest, which meant she was better off leading them.

“Hey, Sticks!”

She whipped around only to watch her second pistol sail through the air. Catching it didn’t prove to be very difficult, but she still sneered at him — an expression that only got worse when he complained about the state of the gun.

 _Ugly_ and _slow_ were the words he used.

Juniper didn’t have any reason to fight him on that. Her pistols were afterthoughts at best.

“Expect more of ‘em on the road,” Arthur called to her as he took up the rear. “That can’t be all. We just aren’t that lucky.”

Arthur was right, of course. They weren’t that lucky. On the road, between the winding path of pine trees and fallen leaves, they encountered a group of men riding behind a stage. Something about them — either the guns, or their horses’ tack — bought them out as outlaws, and they attacked without even bothering to think about how large or little the payout would be on their heads.

The stagecoach was abandoned, and before long, though her arms were aching and Micah looked winded on the back of his horse, the men were slouching in their saddles or kicking up dirt, boots caught in their stirrups.

“You ain’t worth all this trouble,” Juniper bit out, finally. They were alone, crossing a river that barely reached Toffee’s knees. The sky was darker and paler all at once, and the air smelled of oncoming lightning. “I hope one day Dutch realizes that.”

Micah made a sound like a hissing cat.

If Arthur had been closer, he might have walloped him.

“Yeah, you _still_ ain’t worth all this trouble.”

Micah’s laugh pitched lower, mellowing out to a chuckle. He rode Blaylock well, hips rocking in time with the horse’s gait, back pin-straight. In another life, he might’ve been impressive. “Dutch doesn’t seem to think so yet.” He picked his thumbnail between his teeth. “Lucky me. And you, my saviors.”

There was no getting around the eye roll he forced out of her. If Arthur wasn’t going to wallop him, she wanted to be the one to do it.

 _Someday_ , she thought to herself. _I might not put a bullet in him, but I’m gonna make him hurt._

“You’re good folk, even if you could stand to work on your aim.”

Juniper stared straight ahead.

 _No, I’m gonna put a bullet in him. A big one_.


	12. Charlotte IV.

Just as Charlotte felt herself getting used to the atmosphere at camp, something changed, as if God sought nothing more than to keep her on her toes. Never comfortable, but always aware.

Coming of age as she did, you learned not to worry much about comfort. Shoes pinched. Stays constricted. Buns left your scalp aching and tender for hours. And the eyes — the appraising stares, the mean-spirited glances, the dreamy, distracted ogling — all hurt in one way or another, sometimes more than the trappings you were expected to strap yourself into.

Living with the gang wasn’t unlike the parties and salons she’d been to growing up. Everyone was rougher around the edges. They spoke clumsily and often without consideration. They leaned into violence rather than away from it. But, at the end of the day, machinations were machinations, and you learned how to deal with them on the fly.

The first thing she noticed was that there was no celebration to welcome Micah home.

If there had been one, attendance would have been woefully low, if his reception spoke to his reputation among the gang.

Most gave him a wide berth. Lenny took another path around the chuckwagon specifically so he didn’t have to brush shoulders with the man. Mary-Beth tucked up on the other side of one of the trees that surrounded the clearing, oil lamp turned low and book in-hand. Victor’s expression was no less than drawn as he rolled up his sleeves and pinned the wagon’s canvas open to check on his health whenever he was ready to be tended to.

Juniper spoke to the sort of man Micah was with the most clarity. Her face flashed red under her smattering of freckles, and she splintered from the group she’d been traveling with, trudging past everyone in favor of getting to the very edge of their campsite. Hosea followed her after sparing a nod in Micah’s direction.

There were those who went straight for him. Bill clapped him on the shoulder and then on the back, sending him off in Pearson’s direction with a greeting Charlotte couldn’t quite make out. Grimshaw found him with what looked like a warning. And Dutch — Dutch rested both hands on his shoulders and gave them a squeeze, welcoming him home before turning away with Arthur on his heels.

Three left that morning, and three returned, each of them uninjured and caked with mud.

She expected such good news to be greeted with fanfare, but there was none of that. Life continued on as usual, barely disturbed from its path. That was what settled in Charlotte’s stomach as something of a bad omen.

Even with the day’s waning sunlight, she continued to work on the ripped sleeve of John’s shirt. Her eyes ached and fingertips throbbed, but that was better than suffering Grimshaw’s pointed glare or her furious screaming. Tucked up close to the fire, she listened to Uncle fiddling with his banjo and paid passing attention to the discussions around the fire.

“Funny ting,” Sean said, leaning over his knees to poke at the campfire with a stick that caught just as quickly. “There was singing and dancing well into the night when I got dragged back here by me boots.”

John’s shoulders rose and fell with a huff of a laugh. “Nobody wanted him back ‘cept for Dutch, and you know it.”

“Ohh, yeah. I just tink it’s funny.”

Charlotte looked up from the stitching, blinking to clear her eyes. As time went on and Micah made his rounds, the camp separated into individual groups as it usually did, but they were slightly different than the night before. Lenny crouched down beside the tree where Mary-Beth sat, both of them lined with the yellow glow of the oil lamp. Hosea had a hand poised in the middle of Juniper’s back, stroking a careful line up the path of her spine. Even Dutch found his way over to Molly for the first time in days.

They sought to comfort and be comforted, which spoke volumes about the sort of man Micah Bell was.

“Why does everyone hate him so much?” she asked, curious as to if her interpretation of the atmosphere was correct.

Sean giggled and continued making splinters from what remained of the stick he’d been holding. John stared down at the dirt beneath his feet, his shoulders tense and jaw tenser. It was Uncle who answered as he plucked idly at the strings of his banjo.

“He’s un-plea-sant,” he said, putting a hefty amount of emphasis on the word. He drew it out, as if each syllable deserved its own time in the sun. “I’ve met plenty unpleasant men in my life as a notorious outlaw, but those men ain’t got nothing on him. Not ‘cause he’s more dangerous, mind you. He’s just plain old mean.”

Mean.

Never in Charlotte’s life had she ever expected to hear a man running with a gang of outlaws call someone else _mean_.

“I got one better than that,” Sean chimed in, dropping the remains of the stick into the fire and spreading out his freckled hands in preparation. Everyone tilted their head to look over at him, even John. “Micah Bell’s a right engorged prick, and there’s no one for a thousand miles in either way willing ta put their mouth on ‘im. ‘Course he’s un-plea-sant.”

Charlotte nearly dropped John’s shirt into the fire.

“Now, Sean.” Uncle set his banjo across his outwardly turned knees, shaking a forefinger at him. “There is a lady present. You shouldn’t say such things in front of her.”

“Reckon she’s heard worse.” His laugh thinned around the edges. When he looked at Charlotte, she didn’t see any guilt in his expression. He wore a smirk instead. “The English look to be a prickly buncha prudes, but they’re hornier than the rest of us.”

Charlotte stood from the low stool she sat upon and passed by John as she left, handing him the very shirt Sean almost made her burn right in front of his face.

“Thank you,” was all he said before bundling it in his arms.

“I can’t believe you made her leave!” Uncle bemoaned when she was far enough to hear and not turn back, kicking one of his feet out in the dirt and taking his banjo up into his arms again. “There’s no prettier sight from here to Marietta. You’re mean as Micah for that, to tell true.”

Charlotte shook out her hands before wringing her fingers out. The tension in her knuckles eased beneath the careful push of her fingertips. She tried her best not to make them crack, remembering the things her mother told her early on in life. Popping knuckles led to them blowing out and doubling in size. No one wanted a wife with knuckles as big as theirs.

Whether that was true or not, she wasn’t sure, but she still treated herself with a certain amount of learned delicacy.

Her bedroll was already stretched out beside Tilly’s when she got there. The girl in question had most of the blanket their shared curled tight around her, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Neither of them were very used to sharing, not yet.

Removing the new pair of shoes she’d gotten from the general store in Valentine, Charlotte settled down onto the sparsely cushioned roll and stretched out her legs, toes flexing in her stockings. Everything save for her dress was new; she hadn’t been given an opportunity to wear the trousers she’d purchased for riding.

She lifted both hands up to her hair, taking a few minutes to unpin her bun and let her thick brown hair down. The tingling in her scalp was enough to make her hiss, but she was sure not to wake Tilly by doing so.

Head bowed forward, Charlotte brushed her fingers through her hair and massaged at her scalp, lip bitten as she worked over the tender flesh.

“Are you needed in camp tomorrow?”

The sudden question — spoken in a deep, rich voice — snapped her head up, hair flopping in every direction as her hands fell away. A particularly stubborn lock floated over her brow, concealing most of her face save for one surprised eye. Charles was right there, crouching, speaking to her in murmured tones to keep from waking Tilly up, either.

“Wh… what?” Charlotte asked, her own voice pitched lower than usual.

Charles looked at her for a moment, the corner of his mouth hitching upward in a hint of a smile.

“Miss Grimshaw will have something for me,” she said once his question registered in her mind. Her hands flew up to her hair again, smoothing it back away from her face. “Is that what you meant?”

He shook his head, elbows on his knees, as comfortable crouching there as he would have been on a stool. There was something natural about the way he carried himself, like he belonged in any position he could put himself into. “Grimshaw will always have work. I wanted to know if any of the others had a job for you in the meantime.”

Charlotte considered what he said. No one had approached her since she returned from the stagecoach job with Hosea and Juniper, not that that surprised her. She wasn’t ready to take on anything more dangerous than that. For the most part, working for Miss Grimshaw suited her.

“No one,” she said.

“Tomorrow, I’m going out on a hunt.”

Wind stirred the ends of Charles’s hair. It was longer than she’d ever seen on a man, thicker than her own. Charlotte watched for a moment before finding his eyes again, her brows pinched upward.

She must have looked terribly confused because when he clarified himself, his voice was even softer than before.

“You said that you wanted to learn how to shoot,” Charles said. He didn’t tease her. He didn’t prod or poke fun. He said the words, and he said them conversationally rather than deriding her for not knowing. “Better to learn on a hunt. If you miss, the animals will just run away.”

“Whereas if you tried to teach me on a person, they would be more likely to shoot back.”

Charles’s laugh was short and quiet, a gentle huff rather than a guffaw like Uncle or a giggle like Sean. “More likely,” he repeated, smiling to himself. Then, he cleared his throat and rested a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder, suddenly more serious than before. “Tomorrow, not long before sunrise, I’ll wake you up.”

Before sunrise? Charlotte’s muscles ached, thinking of riding a horse after so little sleep.

“I appreciate your wanting to help me, Charles.”

His hand fell away, and he scratched instead at the soft line of his jaw. Rather than saying that she was welcome, he nodded and pushed himself up onto his feet, disappearing beyond the tent without another word.

If she wanted her rest, she needed to fall asleep the moment her head hit her solitary, flat pillow, but it was early yet and the camp bustled well into the night. Whether or not she would get any restorative rest would remain to be seen.

“He’s sweet on you, you know.”

Charlotte’s eyes snapped to Tilly. Apparently, she hadn’t been sleeping that whole time. “Excuse me?”

“Charles usually keeps to himself if he’s not working with Arthur.” Tilly turned over and hitched herself up onto her elbow, the blanket still wound around her like a cocoon. A pretty silk scarf covered her hair, and she looked to be equal parts tired and charmed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take someone else out on a hunt.”

She hadn’t been there long, but Charlotte had never seen him do anything of the sort, either. Most of the time, Charles was busy doing chores around camp or tending to his horse. He didn’t seem to like hanging around the camp like Uncle or Bill Williamson.

“He hardly knows me,” Charlotte deflected. “There’s no reason for him to—”

“Who said liking somebody’s got to be reasonable?”

Heat pushed up into Charlotte’s round cheeks. She rubbed over one of them with her hand despite the ache that traveled down to her wrist. “I suppose that makes sense,” she murmured. “But…”

Looking over at Tilly, she found that she didn’t know what to say. Charles was an attractive man, and he was different from any of those who crossed her path leading up to Dutch van der Linde. That was enough for her to be interested, even if he wasn’t half as handsome as he was.

“You’ve stolen all of the blanket,” she said, pointing at the tiny patchwork flap that was the only part not wound around Tilly’s body.

Tilly laughed, then turned over again, snuggling into the quilt. “Sure have.”

Curling up on her bedroll, back facing Tilly and head tilted up toward the sky, Charlotte needed only a few moments of gazing into the soft black to feel herself drifting.

Sleep stretched out over her eyes after a long day of working — dreamless, heavy, and as restful as it could be considering where she slept.

Only Mary-Beth interrupted her and only for a moment when she tugged off her shoes and elbowed into the wagon’s wheel hard enough to make the whole thing shake. She cursed and apologized in equal measure, flustered from something other than the sudden noise she made.

Hours later, Charlotte woke to peachskin clouds and a gentle hand stirring her shoulder.

She scrubbed a hand over her face, fingertips pruned from the cold, and screwed her face up in a yawn.

“Eat something,” Charles murmured. His hair was tied back from his face in a thick braid, bound with the same sort of leather cord that he wore around his neck. “Eat something, then get ready. We’re heading out in an hour.”

“An hour.” Charlotte licked her lips, clearing her throat as politely as she could manage. “Should I bring anything?”

His brow furrowed. “Do you have a gun I didn’t know about?”

Sleep turned her brain into a soupy mess, and sense abandoned her, leaving her there to blink up at him owlishly. “I don’t own a gun.”

Charles ducked his head. A smile spread over his mouth as slow as cold treacle; it thinned at the corners and made his upper lip seem even softer by comparison. Not that she’d noticed such a thing in her haze.

Absolutely not.

“Oh.” Charlotte huffed out something akin to both a whine and a sigh. “You were teasing me.”

At least none of the girls were awake to hear her say something so foolish. Tilly was still wrapped up in the quilt with only her headwrap of sea green silk poking out from the top, and Mary-Beth was curled in the other direction, her feet tucked up under the wide hem of her dress. Karen snored like a sleeping bear. And Miss Grimshaw rose with the sun and was already off, flitting between her usual morning chores.

Charles pushed his broad hands against his knees and stood from his crouch, not saying a word at first. But then, he turned towards her again, his fingertips brushing over the curve of her shoulder. “An hour,” he reminded her, and he was gone.

An hour to eat and dress and mentally prepare herself for what was going to happen. She’d never been hunting. Her father detested the sport, but he was never allowed to go out either on account of his delicate skin.

Grateful that she hadn’t inherited that from him, at the very least, Charlotte reached for the brush she shared with Mary-Beth and began the laborious process of combing out her hair. Wearing it atop her head was right out. Without the skills required for braiding, she settled upon wearing it tied at the nape of her neck.

Rising up from the ground proved to be more difficult than falling asleep. A twinge in her muscles forced her to stop halfway up onto her feet. She lingered there, half-crouched, and drew in a deep breath before pushing the rest of the way.

Her trousers sat above her flat pillow, folded neatly and never worn. She smoothed her palm over the rough fabric. Never the type to put much stock in what a person wore, even herself, the sight of them still struck her in a way she’d never felt before. There was no freedom in a pair of trousers; she wasn’t romantic enough to believe that. But there was comfort.

Dressing out in the open was one of the few things that gave her the most pause about living like an outlaw. Washing up was awful, but relieving herself in one of the many holes dug around camp was worse.

Still, there was no way around it.

If she was going to follow the Van der Linde gang until they were able to get their hands on Archer’s money, comfort could be a pair of jean trousers.

Charlotte changed into them around the back of the wagon. The fabric clung in ways she wasn’t accustomed to, in places that weren’t accustomed to being constricted. Never before had her thighs been so… present.

After all manner of huffing and puffing and self-conscious tugging was through, she bundled her skirt carelessly in her arms and let it drop onto her pillow right beside Tilly, who was still asleep and looking particularly angelic in the diffused pink light of the morning. She felt a prickle of jealousy, then felt just as terrible for wanting more than what she already had.

_Lucky_ was what some people would call her. Better to be in trousers and learning to hunt than dead at the hands of Angelo Bronte and his thugs.

Her state was mirrored cleanly in the state of the camp. Even the fires smoked in a lazy fashion. Flames licked at the bottom of Pearson’s pot, warming the two tarnished coffee percolators that sat among the ashes and old wood. At the wide round table everyone used for games of poker sat Miss Grimshaw and Miss Vallières, each of them nursing a steaming cup of coffee and talking in hushed tones. Dutch’s tent was closed up tight with no sign of movement inside, and the drape that ran the length of the balcony extended from Arthur’s tent was pulled just far enough to nearly conceal the two sets of socked feet at the end of his cot.

Apart from Susan and Madelaine, only Pearson and Micah were awake. The former was cooking up breakfast while the latter sat not far off, perched on the edge of a chair’s seat with a knife in one hand and a razor strop stretched out with the other.

Charlotte made her way towards Pearson without hesitation. She didn’t have anything to say to anyone else, and they were leaving soon enough.

_An hour_ , Charles told her.

“The chickens gave us a few eggs this morning,” Pearson said with no small amount of cheer in his voice and in his round, pink cheeks. “This’ll be good eating before you head out.”

He looked up at her. Beneath the brim of his top hat, his eyes glinted.

“I’m glad to see you’re learning the ropes. It’s good to have another person bringing in meat for the camp.”

The chuckle that bubbled out of Charlotte’s throat was nothing but the sound of her distilled nerves. She tugged at her blouse, smoothing her hands over the back of her jeans. Being too aware of the shape of her body made conversing like a normal person strangely difficult.

“I hope that I can,” she offered as Pearson dished out a few forkfuls of pale yellow egg onto a beaten tin bowl.

He gave her a strip of dried meat, too, with instructions to soften it up in her coffee. Her nose threatened to turn upward, but she forced it back down and smiled. “Thank you. I will.”

Charlotte didn’t much care for coffee. She planned on making her teeth ache around the hunk of venison before dunking it into the stuff.

As she walked over to the unoccupied rectangular table on the other side of camp, she heard something — a low-pitched whistle from the other direction. Sounds like that one cropped up all around camp on any given day, so she paid it no mind. Not until it rang out again. That time, it was a few whistles in rapid succession, aimed directly at her.

Her fingers curled around the bowl as she looked off toward the sound only to find Micah staring straight at her.

“You might wanna be careful ‘bout all that food there, miss,” he said in a tone that reached for helpful. “You’re already damn near busting out of those pants of yours.”

Embarrassment choked her. She tugged the bowl closer and dug her spoon into the eggs, breaking eye contact with Micah moments before shoving her first bite of breakfast into her mouth. Sean had been right the night before. Crude, but right.

Prick.

Charlotte needed that food for riding and hunting, from what Charles and Pearson implied, so she ate her fill, cleaning the plate without flourish or mocking phrase. She simply ate, stood, and brought her dish back over to Pearson once she was finished with every last morsel. He accepted the bowl, his thick brows knitted upwards and concern scrawled all over his red face.

“No one ever gained anything by listening to Micah Bell,” he said. “Remember that, and you’ll do fine.”

She somehow managed a smile.

“Good luck on your hunt today. Though, with Charles there, I don’t think you’ll need it.”

Micah wasn’t the first man to ever make a comment about her body, and he wouldn’t be the last. She grew up in rooms dense with smoke and the smell of whiskey, sitting beside her father while men twice, sometimes three times her age made merry fun. He never stopped them. He had no reason to, when every scrap of his attention was focused on the game at hand.

There were worse than him. That thought emboldened her.

Charlotte passed him without a word, her eyes trained on the roughly hewn hitching posts and the group of horses that idled around that space. Only a few of the younger ones were hitched, while the others were trusted to keep in the area without issue, including Amaranth and The Count and Brown Jack. The beautiful dappled horse Charles stood beside was one of them. _Taima_. She overheard the name once as Kieran pushed a brush through her black-brown hair.

“You finished sooner than I expected,” Charles told her as she approached. And then, more quietly: “I heard what Micah said to you.”

The fogginess of sleep still sticking close to her was what kept away the desire to hide. She nodded and dipped beneath Taima’s head to join him. “They’re just words,” she said with a shrug.

“He gets his kicks hurting people.” Charles didn’t have to explain Micah Bell to her, but he did and the words were like a brush of soft, sun-warmed leather. “He might look like an idiot, but he knows what to say. Here.”

Charlotte watched with interest as he hoisted himself up onto Taima’s saddle. Her tack was simple, but well-made. Embossed leather. Satchels beaded with something pale as bone. Or, perhaps it was bone. One of them closed with a flap sewn with teeth, bordered with a creamy white ribbon that had begun fraying at the edges.

Distracted by Taima’s dress, she made a quiet sound of surprise when she felt Charles tuck his hands up under her arms.

Being picked up in such a way would never fail to surprise her, but settling down onto the saddle with her legs spread was infinitely stranger. She shifted from one side to the other, toes curling in her new boots. Her knee bumped into the stock of a rifle. She apologized before winding her long arms around Charles’s waist.

Sun-warmed was an apt way to describe him, too.

Charlotte settled, and Charlotte sighed. “I’m glad that we are, ah… that we’re leaving him behind.”

Making Charles laugh, no matter how quiet that laugh was, buoyed a sense of confidence inside of her. She laced her fingers together as he guided Taima towards the dirt road that bled from the side of the campsite and out to the road.

“I always look forward to that,” he murmured.

Unlike her frenzied first ride on Brown Jack and the others that followed, riding on Taima was nothing short of a joy. Whether that was due to the horse’s temperament or the riders’, she couldn’t be sure, but she knew that sharing a saddle with Charles was miles better than sharing one with Bill Williamson or even Arthur.

Charles held himself upright with ease, following Taima’s pace and stride with his body in a way that taught Charlotte more than the others had.

Morning had not yet reached for the forest. The canopy was too dense, casting an impenetrable chill and shadow around them that was only broken by the occasional smattering of dappled light. Taima’s footfalls echoed among the sounds that rose up from the trees and forest floor, of songbirds and the thump of rabbits’ feet, of leaves rustling and the snapping of fallen branches.

“You should talk to Dutch when we get back,” Charles said as they made their way out onto the dirt road. “See about saddling one of the horses for you.”

Charlotte’s first thought was, ‘ _How much would that cost_?’

Horses were expensive. Maintaining them, just as costly. She had no idea how much a good saddle would cost, and the idea of incurring any more of a debt to him was enough to make her go quiet.

“Not that I mind riding like this,” he continued when she said nothing in response. “Taima doesn’t, either.”

“Oh, I didn’t—” Charlotte loosened her grip around his waist and sat up as straight as she could at his back, her chin high enough to float above his shoulder as she spoke to him. “I hadn’t worried about that,” she said. “I was only thinking of the price. I would rather not owe Dutch any more money, even if I have enough to pay for my painting supplies now.”

Charles made a quiet, thoughtful noise and guided Taima off the dirt road and into the tall grass. It poured over the countryside, yellow turned to gold in the morning light. The rolling hills of the Heartlands were arresting, in all honesty. She’d never seen anything so beautiful, not since crossing the ocean and finding herself in Saint Denis.

“A saddle shouldn’t cost you too much.” One hand on the saddle’s horn, he surveyed the hills that stretched out in front of them. Taima’s pace slowed without any order from Charles. With a gentle tug of the reins, she stopped completely, standing there in the golden field and waiting for them to dismount. “As long as it’s comfortable for both you and the horse.”

Twisting around, Charles gave her a curious once over.

“Your posture is good for horse-riding,” he murmured, nudging at her shoulder with the side of his hand. “Do you know how to get down?”

Charlotte glanced down towards the ground, then found her way back to him, swallowing back the urge to say, ‘No.’

“Yes,” she lied.

He nodded at her, which was as close to encouragement as she was going to get and no more than she deserved for lying to him in an attempt to not look quite so helpless. She knew better. She _knew_ that lying left a higher risk of making yourself look like an absolute fool. But her mouth scampered out ahead of her. There was no stopping that.

Holding onto Charles’s waist for stability, Charlotte eased herself down off of the saddle, sliding most of the way before falling the rest of the way down to the ground.

She landed without her skirt to trip her. The muscles in her legs trembled in surprise at the impact, but she stood firm and stared up at him, smiling.

Charlotte didn’t know if she’d ever manage such a thing again.

There was no praise for her from Charles, not for doing the thing she told him she could do. Instead, he followed her down and took his rifle from the large holster that rode at the front of the saddle.

“Follow me,” he said.

Above them, the sky paled to blue and the peachy clouds only retained a shimmer of their previous color among the white. But still, the grass they moved through shimmered in the light, dancing away from them as they moved together. Their steps were all but silent. They were whispers, even though their mouths didn’t move to fill the time.

When Charles crouched to look through the blades of grass, Charlotte slowed in his stead. She watched him with a different type of curiosity every time. At first, when he explained what he was looking for, she looked at him as a teacher. The second time he stopped to follow those same tracks, she looked at him as a man with a lock of black hair fallen over his brow.

Her fingers twitched, but ultimately remained still.

The third time, Charlotte reached out and touched over the distinct impression of a doe’s hoof. “They’re tilted this way,” she said, careful not to whisper. Whispers carried farther and faster than the hum of a murmured voice. “In this direction. Did they split up?”

Charles followed the eastward arch of the doe’s tracks, minutely different from the ones he’d seen. In that moment, he made a choice of which doe he wanted to follow.

Her cheeks warmed when he chose hers.

“Yes.” He stood, though he kept his back hunched forward until he was almost level with the tall grass. “We’ll follow this one.”

As they followed the leavings of that single deer, Charles explained to her what they were doing. His fingertips toyed with the soft ends of the grass as he passed, more of an idle fidgeting than anything tied to his lessons. He told her of things that might indicate an injured animal, such as inconsistent prints and blood mixed into the mud or left among the grass. He asked her if she knew how to whistle, warning her that that was a trick saved for people more confident in their shooting.

They crested the hill in front of them, and Charles reached out, his hand curling around one of Charlotte’s wrists. She stopped short, crouching beside him. The position made her thighs and rear end burn, but she’d expected such a thing from the beginning.

What she hadn’t expected was how beautiful the Heartlands were in the morning.

Fields of golden grass were eye-catching. They were beautiful when taken up by the wind. But the snow-capped mountains and grazing group of deer made her reach out and clutch onto Charles’s arm and shoulder, her hands curling against the fabric of his coat. For the longest time, she’d seen America as a wild, untamed land full of bloodied teeth.

There was nothing brutal about the sights laid out in front of her. There was just quiet.

Or, there would just be quiet until she took her first clumsy shot with Charles’s rifle, spooking the deer and ruining the scene.

“Charles…” Charlotte held one of her hands on his shoulder, close enough to feel the stubble on his jaw when he turned to look at her. It brushed against her knuckles. “This might sound like… the most foolish thing you’ve ever heard, but I don’t want to shoot them.”

She looked at him just in time to see his lips part, to see the hunter in his eyes become someone else.

“You have to learn,” Charles told her. “There’s no shame in hunting, as long as you don’t hunt for prestige. There’s nothing cruel about it.”

Charlotte inclined her head, but she didn’t move. She didn’t leave the subject behind in favor of listening to the man who knew better. “I could learn at camp, couldn’t I?” she asked. “There are plenty of trees in the woods. Pearson has so many discarded tin cans. I could learn to aim on them. That way, it doesn’t have to be a person _or_ an animal.”

She watched Charles look over the field, his eyes trailing over the doe with her head ducked into the grass for a meal. There was no hesitation in the way he stared, only appreciation.

“You’ll learn at camp, then.” He stood and tucked his rifle at his side. “Come on.”

Charlotte stood and did as he said. Relief filled her like a hearty meal, made her heart stutter happily in her chest. She hadn’t been afraid of hunting so much as shooting a gun. And even then, with Charles there, she hadn’t been very afraid of that, either.

Minds changed. Perhaps it was the artist in her, but beauty like that could stop her cold or send her flying. That day, it turned her around.

As she followed in Charles’s footsteps back to Taima, Charlotte’s fingertips toyed with the blades of golden grass.


	13. Madelaine V.

Madelaine had watched while Hosea and Juniper planned out their coach robbery, even before they decided to include Charlotte. She had watched as Javier and Charles stewed over a crudely drawn map of some homestead or another. She had watched as Arthur and Juniper prepared for their trip into Strawberry to rescue Micah Bell. There was crime happening everywhere you looked in the clearing they called Horseshoe Overlook. It didn’t surprise her so much as it intrigued her.

Between scrubbing plates and spoons, she watched as Arthur, John, and Charles brought Dutch into their plans for a train robbery.

A real, live train robbery.

She couldn’t deny that the thought was exciting. She’d never been much for dime novels about cowboys and outlaws and the honorable sheriffs who chased them down.

Her favorite books were adventure stories, softer around the edges and with fewer guns. But they were just as thrilling in her mind, even if none of her new friends would agree with her.

“You didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d want to join up,” Pearson said, interrupting her thoughts and her line of sight when he stepped in front of her. He pushed his butcher’s knife through the stained fabric of the apron tied at his waist. Once the blood and chunky marrow was cleared away, the metal glittered in the firelight. “Unless it’s not the job you’re interested in.”

Madelaine’s brow furrowed into a frown, but that was soon replaced with a cautious smile instead. While she didn’t consider herself to be obvious, gossip spread around camp as easily as it had at the hotel. Maybe even easier.

If everyone thought she was Dutch’s piece on the side, they were wrong, and they could continue being wrong for all she cared to clarify.

“I’m not wanting to go with them,” she said, surety in her tone as she submerged another plate into the washing basin’s murky water. “Something about robbing a train just seems… more like what I expected them to be doing.”

Pearson gave a quiet, “Huh!” before tucking his knife into his belt and folding both of his thick arms over his chest. “I guess that’s true. You haven’t seen what they get up to quite yet, seeing as you’re the newest addition to our fine family. Makes sense, makes sense.” He scratched at the scruff under his chin. “But have you heard any stories? About Dutch and the others, I mean.”

Karen stepped up beside the splintering wooden table and deposited two plates into the basin. The additions brought the lukewarm water higher over Madelaine’s forearms.

“Pearson and stories?” She rolled her eyes skyward, curls bouncing off of her round, flushed cheeks. Her voice practically dripped with sarcasm. “Oh, boy, Madelaine. You’re in for a real treat.”

“They can’t be that bad,” Madelaine offered, glancing up from her work just as her words buoyed the cook’s waning confidence. He grinned at her. His cheeks were round and flushed, too. “You’ve been running with Dutch for a while, haven’t you? You must have a lot to tell.”

Karen batted a hand in Madelaine’s direction. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Then, she was gone, and Pearson seemed lighter for it. He snatched up one of the old fraying dish towels and buffed the cleaned plates dry as he spoke. He was the cook; he didn’t have to help, but he did.

“It wasn’t far out west when I first learned how dangerous a train job could be.” Gesturing with the towel, he dunked one of the plates back into the water until he was content. It wasn’t a comment on her cleaning so much as it was a comment on the stickiness of his stew. “Now, I wasn’t with them at the time. You couldn’t _pay_ me to be involved in that sort of thing, no matter how exciting it must be. But when they brought Arthur back to the camp with shrapnel in his side, I almost got a second taste of my dinner.”

Madelaine sucked in a sharp breath, her fingers clamping down hard around the edge of the plate. She’d seen a bullet wound or two. She’d felt a man die at her feet. Hell, she was still carrying around the rusty remnants of that day on the hem of her skirt.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, miss, but… it’s a dangerous business that these boys — that _we_ — get up to sometimes.”

We.

The word made her heart skitter around in her chest like an ill-tempered mare.

“Did he tell you how it happened?”

Pearson set the first of the plates down in what would be a still-damp stack, rubbing at his hands with the towel before taking the one Madelaine offered him. “I heard about how it happened from John rather than Arthur. Over a poker game while Mister Morgan was still recovering.”

She bobbed her head, listening and scrubbing and watching Dutch and the others over Pearson’s rounded shoulder.

John and Arthur sat at the table while Charles stood between them, pointing at the worn wooden slats, his finger drawing a line of what could have been anything. Train tracks, maybe. Dutch leaned against the table with both hands, his head bowed in thought and his back an otherwise rigid line. Not far off, just within earshot, Edwin and Juniper sat cleaning their guns. Edwin, a pair of pistols, and Juniper, a long, lean rolling block rifle.

The lantern on the table cast a golden glow onto the lot of them, flicking fire onto the tips of their noses and the points of their chins, all while deepening the shadows of their roaming eyes.

“Apparently, Arthur didn’t knock out the driver as cleanly as he thought,” Pearson explained. He dropped another plate down onto the first. “There was a shotgun leaned up against the wall of the cab. It’s a wonder he didn’t get his lung busted open for that mistake.”

All it took was one mistake. That thought would haunt her, going forward.

“I can promise you he hasn’t left a conductor alive since that train job,” he said. “If he doesn’t shoot them on sight, he throws them out before he even bothers to stop the train.”

Madelaine worried at her bottom lip before looking to Pearson again.

“Have you ever gotten injured?” she asked.

“Me?” Pearson let go of a whistling laugh. “Once or twice, but nothing as grand or daring as that.”

Scraping off a chunk of potato into a bucket beside the worktable, she wondered how many injuries Dutch had received over the years from jobs like that one. He didn’t have any scars on his face, old _or_ new, but his body was covered in them. She remembered how it felt to brush her fingertips over the puckered gunshot wound under the blade of his shoulder. She remembered how his skin warmed in the water save for a few pale slashes around his belly. A knife? Maybe. She couldn’t know for sure.

“What happened?” Her inquisitive nature would get her smacked one day, but Pearson wasn’t that sort of man. “If you don’t mind tellin’ me.”

“A few years back, some O’Driscolls got the drop on us as we were moving camps.” Pearson passed his towel from his dominant hand to the other, using those fingers to tug as his collar, revealing a crooked scar across the base of his throat. “One nasty piece of work pulled me out of the wagon and held a knife to my neck. He didn’t get very far before Dutch put a bullet in him and Hosea and Arthur killed the rest, but it was long enough for my struggling to earn me this.”

Madelaine shifted on her feet, glancing between Pearson and the others. “I wonder…”

She trailed off, jaw working. There was no telling how many scars she would have by the time she died. There was no telling how she’d get them or who’d give them to her. The uncertainty had bothered her at first, but now, it felt almost freeing.

There was potential there for a life full of adventure, full of sights and tastes she never would have seen otherwise. You couldn’t want that and be afraid of it at the same time.

No one could live like that.

“What?”

Madelaine’s attention snapped to Pearson. Both of her hands were dipped halfway into the water, all the dishes clean. She blinked. “Hm?”

“You said, ‘I wonder.’”

She gave her head a shake. Rubbing her hands dry on her skirt, she stepped away from the basin with a sweet smile that she aimed in Pearson’s direction. “Thank you for your help, Mister Pearson.”

“It’s no problem at all,” he said.

Madelaine scooped up two of the dried plates and moved off in the direction of his cast iron pot. None of them had eaten yet, given how distracting such work could be. So, she dished out four portions of stew into two bowls, keeping them steady on her thighs as she tucked four spoons into the rich red gravy.

Valentine tomatoes — she could tell by the flavor. Venison, dried beef, tinned carrots. Chunks of old bread to keep it thick.

Pearson was a talented cook for what little they had.

She crossed the stretch of dewy grass without paying any mind to anyone save for the men she was about to feed. Dutch looked up from the ‘map’ Charles had drawn with his forefinger as she approached, watching as she got closer and set the plates of stew down on the tabletop. To her credit, she was careful to avoid the imaginary railroad tracks.

“You boys should eat,” Madelaine said, nodding towards the bowls and the extra spoons with a smile. “You gotta eat to focus right.”

John pushed one of the bowls between himself and Charles and chose the spoon closest to him with a grateful tilt of his head. “We were just talkin’ about getting some.”

“And yet, none of us did.” Once Dutch positioned the bowl between himself and Arthur, he shot her a half-smile. “Thank you for thinking of us, Miss Madelaine. Without you, we would have surely starved.”

Spoon floating halfway between the bowl and his mouth, Arthur took a moment to roll his eyes.

“It’s a bowl of damn stew. No need to get all dramatic about it.” He lifted the spoon in Madelaine’s direction. “Thank you, Madelaine.” Once he’d chewed and swallowed the mouthful, he pointed his utensil right at Dutch. “Now, you see how easy that is?”

Dutch chuckled, more amused than offended, and took a bite of his own.

Everyone expected Madelaine to leave once she set down the plates. Maybe she should have, but that curiosity of hers couldn’t be denied. There must’ve been something in the water. Or, in the stew. “So, I hear y’all are working on a train robbery.”

“You’ve heard right,” Charles said, his spoon and half of the bowl of stew ignored.

Considering how messy John was when he was distracted, he’d likely chosen to wait until he was done with half before eating himself.

“What sorta train is it? What’s it carrying?” She held out her hands when she saw both Charles and Dutch hit her with a surprised look, as if someone like her asking such questions was the last thing they’d anticipated. “Unless it’s a secret, of course.”

“There isn’t a secret among us.” Dutch lifted the bowl and tipped it forward, waiting for the stew to slide forward before scooping up a hearty mouthful as he considered the table. “They’ve only just let me in on the details of this operation, so I’ll let them explain it.” He gestured for them to continue, then placed the bowl in front of Arthur, seemingly finished with his meal.

They set about explaining the train job for what had to be the fifth time. Arthur was planning on setting out to Cornwall Kerosene & Tar the next morning to find an oil tanker, something to slow the train enough for the rest to board.

Robbing a train was no big deal, not to them. They’d done larger, more impressive jobs. They’d done worse jobs. What they planned on doing the next night was child’s play at the end of a gun.

Madelaine stood beside Dutch as she listened, occasionally glancing in his direction when he took hold of the conversation. He commended them on their choice of target, on their initiative, on their planning. She hadn’t been given an opportunity to see him work in a situation such as that one before, where he stood as a leader rather than among them.

Even as they ate, their attention was turned towards him. Unfalteringly. The plan was theirs, but anything he had to lend to them was taken into account. More often than not, small things changed under Dutch’s guidance. The scheme was better for it.

“After what happened in Valentine,” Dutch said, tucking one of his thick-fingered hands into the pocket of his trousers, “and what’s bound to happen tomorrow night, our time here is nearly at an end.”

Something Madelaine did not miss was the way Arthur looked up at Dutch and nodded slowly.

“I’m sending a few of you out scouting once you return. There must be somewhere out there, somewhere close, that’d make for a decent camp.” Dutch looked from Arthur to John, from John to Charles. He even looked over to Edwin and Juniper, who were equal parts busy and listening. “This world has not be stripped of _all_ its fruits. We really must remember that.”

Not long before, Dutch claimed that there were no secrets among them. Perhaps there were no secrets surrounding the train robbery, but there was another, lying there in the grass between Arthur’s feet.

She pressed her lips together.

“Thank you for including both me and Miss Madelaine here in on the discussion.” Dutch laid a fatherly hand upon Arthur’s shoulder before stepping away from the table and heading off in the direction of his tent.

Only once did he look over his shoulder, eyes catching on Madelaine’s, but once was enough.

Her chores were done. Her fingers, wrinkled from time spent in the water as much as the cold. Her shoulders and back, aching. Her chores were done. She was tired. But still, she followed him.

Molly wasn’t waiting for him inside. Only a lamp burned on a low table beside his cot, filling the space with creamy, flickering light. Everywhere she looked, there were remnants of other camps, other times. There were pictures and newspaper clippings, rolled up bounty posters, books in varying types of binding and all of them well-kept. On his cot was a blanket and two pillows. She didn’t sit there.

Dutch let down the front flaps of his tent and tied them shut, effectively cutting out anyone who might have interrupted them. His fingers made quick work of the knots.

“In a week’s time and no more, we’re leaving Valentine behind,” he said as he rose up to his full height, still no more than an inch or two taller than Madelaine. Dutch turned towards her and held out his hands, palms up. “I know you have been part of this family of mine for longer than that already, but I need you to know that you’re being given another chance to change your mind. Now that you know what you’re getting into a little better, I felt like… you might appreciate having the opportunity to change your mind.”

Madelaine stared up at him, standing in the middle of his tent with the oil lamp at her back. She cast an impressive shadow over him and over the canvas behind him, broad-shouldered and broad-hipped, with a pile of hair on her head and a long skirt still fringed with blood.

“I’m not of a mind to go anywhere, Dutch,” she said. “I like it here. I don’t mind sleeping on the ground so much, no matter the hell my back gives me. I don’t mind the bug bites or the hard work. It’s…”

“Invigorating?”

The corner of Dutch’s mouth twisted upwards beneath his mustache. Madelaine felt a pang, an undeniable urge to kiss him like she had just a few days prior. God above, he knew what he was doing, didn’t he?

“Before I lost my pa, I never worked a day in my life,” she told him. “We came from money. I grew up knowing for sure that I’d never have to lift a finger. Hell, I didn’t even have to get married, if I didn’t want it. I was an only child after my brother died, so I’d inherit everything my parents had to leave me.”

Madelaine worried her thumbs over her fingers, her fists loose and eyes glued to Dutch’s.

“I was an aimless little girl, Dutch, and I became an aimless woman. I didn’t have no purpose. After what happened to mama and pa, I didn’t have any family, neither.” She tucked her chin upward. “I ain’t leaving.”

The world ceased to exist outside of that tent. Dutch stared at her, lips parted and eyes dark in her shadow. And she stared at him, fringed in pale light, her expression desperate and sure. Whether or not he was accustomed to protestations of loyalty, she couldn’t be sure. She’d only known him for a month.

“Madelaine, I…”

“I don’t know what role I’m gonna end up playing in your gang,” she murmured, toeing carefully around her words. That penetrating gaze of his had her feeling more than a little aware of herself. “If I’m gonna be out there one day, wearing trousers and shooting a gun, or if I’m always just gonna be washing y’alls dishes. Either way, I’m gonna be there.”

_I’m gonna be there_.

She wanted to repeat herself, but he was there, two steps closer than before with a hand at her wrist.

In her chest, her heart thumped. In her wrist, beneath Dutch’s thumb, her pulse followed, hot blood lancing through her veins.

“Then, you will be here,” he told her. “And you will be protected, no matter what happens and no matter where we go.”

Madelaine ducked her head. She broke the contact between their eyes, but didn’t move away, didn’t pull away. Not until she heard someone outside of the tent. Not until Molly parted the tied flaps of the tent and looked in on them, wanting nothing more than some quiet time after dinner.

“Dutch?”

There was a question in her voice, rather than any kind of anger or blame. For that, Maddie was grateful.

Dutch looked back at her over his shoulder. “Just a minute, Molly.”

The truth was that nothing had happened between them, nothing more than a touch. He’d laid his hand upon Arthur’s shoulder not long before.

That was what Dutch did. He reached out.

Still, guilt prickled at the nape of Madelaine’s neck. She didn’t have the heart to snatch her hand away — not the heart and not the strength. Instead, she eased her hand away from the one holding it.

“Thank you for including me tonight, Dutch,” she said, her words casual enough despite the heat in her face and under her skin. “I’ll learn the ropes someday.”

Dutch untied the knots just as quickly as he tied them. There was an edge to his movements; they were jagged, almost annoyed. He pushed back the canvas and offered Madelaine the night, just as he offered Molly the warmth and soft comfort of the tent.

Madelaine nodded to Molly as she passed her. The woman’s smile was tight.

“Have a good night, Miss O’Shea.”

Molly had already looked away from her when she murmured a hushed, “Goodnight.”


	14. Juniper V.

Juniper had her orders.

Directions.

Either word worked; she wasn’t the type to chew on her own fury when told what to do.

Those orders had her sitting on her rump with her back to a thick-bodied tree a ways away from the tracks. The boys were close enough to see with the naked eye, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t watching them through her scope, even bubbled as the view was due to the lens.

They all had their bandannas hitched up over their mouths, weapons at their sides, the robbery on their tongues. She wouldn’t have minded being down there, not after Strawberry. The botched job had given her something of a taste for close quarters, and some small songbird in her chest was mighty keen on proving that she could be damned good at shooting in any situation.

“One of these days,” she sighed, rubbing her shoulders back against the spruce’s rough bark. The heavy leather of her jacket told her what it thought of that. Reins tied to another tree nearby, Toffee did the same, nickering as she clipped at the grass. “Yeah, yeah, well… I don’t see you doing anything but grazing and getting brushed by that O’Driscoll back at camp. You ain’t got no say in this conversation.”

Down by the tracks, she watched Edwin tug down his blue bandanna in order to steal a kiss on Arthur’s cheek, what little of it was still visible. The man ducked his head, and even that far away, she knew what that laugh sounded like. Rough, and a little overwhelmed.

And then, everyone dispersed. Charles waved in her direction — a signal that the train was closing in. She was already in position, but tension followed the sharp gesture, turning her spine to steel.

She planted herself there, one knee to the dirt and the other bent to keep herself stable. Between that and the tree, the kickback wouldn’t send her flying. Her nerves threatened to throw any and all stability to the wind, but she didn’t listen to them, didn’t let them take hold. The weight of her rifle was what helped the most with that kind of poisonous anticipation. She wasn’t much for the idea of having kids, but cradling that gun sure made her feel almost motherly.

Serene, even, if Juniper could be serene.

Before long, she heard it. The whistling came first. Then, the churning and chugging. After that, she heard little but the keening scrape of metal against metal. Trains moved different outside of big cities. They sounded different. That’s what happened when they were more focused on speed than anything else; they weren’t modes of transportation so much as barreling creatures of hellfire, spitting and crying out into the dark of night.

The muscles in her back went rigid as she watched Arthur climb on top of that oil tank, and even a woman who struggled with her beliefs sent up a prayer to God that the breaks on that train were strong.

_Modern invention better not fail Arthur Morgan. Not tonight._

Through the trees pierced a bright, yellow light. The train wasn’t there until it was, chugging around the corner without a thought spared to what might be laid across the tracks. This wasn’t an ordinary situation, as it was. No driver was on the lookout for oil tanks and outlaws so much as the occasional unfortunate tied to the slats.

“Stop,” June whispered to no one, her voice so low and so quiet that even Toffee didn’t respond. The horse’s long head snapped towards the train with her ears pricked forward. “Stop, damn you.”

And, oh, the train stopped.

Almost on a dime, the train stopped, smoke pouring from its stack and a voice raising up from the cab. That driver bellowed not unlike his own steam engine, shouting for Arthur to explain himself, to get the oil tank out of the way. The man leapt down from the cab and onto the uneven ground, nearly stumbling over the gravel that surrounded the tracks.

“Get that outta here!” he shouted up at Arthur. “What’s the meaning of this, anyhow!?”

As that unfolded in front of her eyes, she saw Charles’s broad, familiar shape rushing across the grass, low enough to the ground that the train’s passengers saw not a glimpse of him.

The man was only halfway through another indignant string of words when Charles rose up and slammed the business end of his tomahawk into the back of the fellow’s neck, cutting him off on a word. Momentum sent the body sprawling forward onto the ground. A boot pushed between his shoulders, Charles worked at the handle until the weapon was freed.

There was some back and forth between Charles and Arthur that she couldn’t quite hear. Seeing wasn’t worth nothing if she didn’t know what was going on. Never mind that assumptions oftentimes got people killed.

Sean idled beside the cab, just far enough to the side to avoid being spotted by an armed guard as he stepped down to see what the driver had been shouting about. With the train stopped all of a sudden, they’d be getting the attention of everyone on board before long. Not that that guard was able to get off a warning cry or even a shot before the Irishman socked him in the nose, knocking him down well enough to stab him up under his ribs.

Inside of the cars, Juniper could see rather than hear the unrest, too. Ladies and gentlemen alike paced the aisles, fretting amongst themselves, all worry and no action. Not that she blamed them. Being taken unawares by something like that rarely had anyone with money reaching for their guns. They had people to protect them, after all.

Except for when they didn’t.

Arthur pulled a folded sack out of his satchel and unfurled it just as he kicked the door to the first passenger car the rest of the way open. She followed the ensuing madness with the sights of her scope, watching as he made his way down the dimly lit path between the seats. Knowing how Arthur worked made the watching easier.

He didn’t take any pleasure from laying into men and women just trying to protect themselves. What he did take was umbrage with fools who threatened him with a mistake at the end of a gun they didn’t know how to use.

One fellow in particular stood from his seat, one arm held back to bar across the chest of a woman who looked like she could be his mother.

June didn’t know enough about rich folks to know whether she was or not.

He brandished a gun, and Arthur slammed a fist down onto the top of his head, knocking him clear off his feet and into the glass window. Not hard enough to crack, but hard enough to make his mama or… whoever she was scream loud enough that Toffee snorted in frustration.

Farther down the train, John and Edwin were busy robbing another passenger car blind. The former brandished his revolver at them while the latter dished their shiniest goods into his own sack, filling it up with who knew how many dollars. Their fence would have a few words for them when they showed up in a few days, all of them good, all of them greedy.

There was no telling how long it took them. The night was too overcast to watch the moon, and June was too damn full of nervous energy to check her own watch. The boys made their way from car to car, switching out filled sacks for empty ones. Imagine traveling with so much money in your pockets. Idiots.

By the end of the line, it was Arthur and Sean checking the baggage cart, where they were bound to find plentiful riches if they’d played their cards right.

Juniper waited. Her knee ached from digging into the hard-packed dirt, and every time she hefted her rifle up a little higher, the muscles in her back trembled with effort. She held still. Strong, too. A tired body could wait until after they were back at camp. Long as she was upright, she planned on rooting herself in, turning her tender muscles to something hard as bark.

A whistle rose above the quiet.

Juniper let her rifle’s scope fall away, squinting out into the dark only to see the eerie yellow glow of two oncoming lanterns. Once her vision cleared properly, she saw two horses. Two men.

“Come on off that train,” one of them called out rather than shouted. “Hand over what you done stole, and you can go on your way!”

June didn’t believe a word of that. It was likely that none of the boys did, either.

“How ‘bout you two get keep riding?” Arthur offered to them, raising his voice right back. As he spoke, John and Edwin joined him, crouched behind the car’s half-wall. “There’s six of us. You mighta got the drop on us, but we got numbers you don’t have.”

The second man laughed.

Through the thick branches of the trees came the glow of another few lanterns. Three, four, five, six. Maybe even seven, somewhere behind them. From outnumbering to outnumbered in a minute. Luck could get fucked, as far as she was concerned.

Her attention snapped back to Arthur from the approaching lanterns, to the baggage car. He lifted a hand, forefinger extended, and tilted it sharply in their direction.

She had her orders.

Juniper pulled her rolling block around and lifted it into her arms again. Bearing down the scope, she led the end of her rifle a ways ahead of them to get a feel of their loping pace and the patterned bob of their heads. Up, down. Up, ddown.

Her breath slowed, then stopped altogether, held behind her clenched teeth to keep her aim steady.

She squeezed the trigger — watching, watching — and then, she pulled it. The shot pierced through the night like a sudden bolt of lightning, a contained explosion that sent one of the two men flying off of his horse. His ankle caught in the stirrups, and when the spooked horse took off in a gallop, he trailed behind like a doll in the hands of a careless little girl.

The other horse was none too happy about the sudden sound, neither. Or the sudden patch of flames licking at the grass from the man’s upturned lantern. It reared back, nearly knocking the second one from his saddle.

Not that the fellow stayed upright for much longer with Arthur there, one of his two pistols aimed right at his chest.

Not a moment after Juniper put a bullet through the man’s skull, fighting erupted in a puff of gun smoke and shouting. There wasn’t nothing exciting about being outnumbered. For all that they knew, there’d be more men coming. For all that they knew, it’d be six against sixteen, against twenty-six, against six hundred by the end of the night.

“God _damnit_ ,” June cursed, brow furrowing as she reloaded her rifle. “There ain’t no way we’re not getting overrun here. Toffee, you ready, girl?”

The horse tugged at her reins. Not hard enough to loosen the knot any, but it was an answer.

She only had another two shots in her before she’d get spotted, hidden in the trees like some kind of flame-haired assassin. And when she got spotted, she’d get hunted down just as quick. So, she chose her targets carefully, her sights straying over one of the men mostly obscured by the trees. The boys couldn’t get at him. It was her job to take him out.

Balancing herself as best she could, Juniper did what she had just before. She followed the movement of his horse, watching for the shallowest pitch of his body before taking the shot. She clipped the side of his head rather than hitting him square between his brows, sending up a spray of bone and brains like a grisly firework.

When she turned to aim her third — and likely final — shot, she saw lamplight flickering in front of her, on the other side of the train. There were half a dozen men bearing down on Arthur and the others, riding fast and hard.

Shouting out a warning gave up her location for sure, but it also saved a life.

“Left!” Juniper bellowed, her normally hoarse voice wringing itself out in her throat. “More of ‘em coming in!”

When she howled her warning, Sean threw himself down on the floor of the open car. The crate he’d been crouching in front of exploded in a rain of splinters halfway down. They’d have lost him if she hadn’t said anything. God, what a thought.

Just as soon as she yelled, however, the remaining men on the right side of the tracks turned towards her, taking in her location… and aiming a flurry of shots her way.

Juniper whirled around to the back of the tree, her breath hitching every time a bullet lodged into the spruce’s trunk. One of the shots caught the flailing trail of her coat, tearing through it like it was paper rather than leather. She cursed at that, too, before setting off in a crouched run for Toffee.

The loosened knot was easily untied, and she tossed the reins back to grasp onto once she was in the saddle. “Come on,” she said, panting as she secured her rifle and reached instead for her pistols.

Just as soon as Juniper and Toffee broke the line of trees and surged down onto the road alongside the tracks, John’s voice rose above the gunshots, curses, and pained screaming of a few horses. “Let’s get the hell outta here!” he cried out, leaping off of the side of the car and dropping down mere feet away from Old Boy.

Everyone was on their horse just as quickly, sacks of loot tied to their saddles. But they were on the other side of the train, leaving Juniper there to deal with the three men that hadn’t been dealt with.

Those few men left turned their attention towards her in an instant. She was closer, armed, and mean-looking above her paisley bandanna. It was no wonder they went after her. She discharged one pistol into a man’s shoulder, and another into the depths of another’s faded blue coat. Desperation fringed at her mind, but determination pushed her through.

She was capable of these kinds of fights. She’d seen Micah and Arthur through in Strawberry, so she could see the boys through anything.

But they weren’t in Strawberry, and they weren’t getting shot at by armed townsfolk.

Justice had a better aim.

When she turned Toffee around towards the baggage car, looking to ride around the back of it and join the others, she heard the shot before she felt anything. The impact sent her sprawling forward, thumping her bread basket against the horn of her saddle. Her breath rushed out of her, but that wasn’t the only thing.

Juniper turned sideways and vomited onto the grass, just barely missing Toffee’s mane and her own boot.

The pain lancing up through her chest and ribs from her bruised gut was a thousand times worse than the gunshot. That was just hot and wet, sticky down the sleeve of her coat. Still, the lack of consistent pain didn’t mean she didn’t have to deal with it.

She let out a choked cry of Charles’s name before pushing her startled Arabian into a gallop.

Charles circled back, his hair catching in the wind as he leveled his revolver at the first man. By the time the second of them shifted his attention from June, the first was already dead.

On any other day, watching Charles take down three men without breaking a sweat would have been a sight to behold, but June couldn’t stop thinking about the blood curling down her arm, dampening the cuff of her sleeve, dripping down between her knuckles.

As she rode, she tugged off the sleeve of her coat. Her paisley bandanna followed. She pinned the patterned fabric under her arm and used one hand to tie it as tight as she could above the wound to staunch the flow of blood. It wouldn’t be enough to keep her from suffering later, but it would keep her on her horse, which was more important.

“June’s shot!” Charles called back to the others before turning Taima alongside Toffee. When he spoke to her, his voice lowered. Softened a little, even. “Are you alright?”

“I’m about half as far away from alright as I can be,” Juniper gritted out from between her molars, flashing him what she hoped would look like a tight smile. “Could be worse. Sure as hell could be better.

Every swallow tasted too much like bile. She gagged on it, spitting over and again over her shoulder as they rode.

As she approached the others, they brought her into the center of the group to avoid her getting shot again, since she was just about useless at anything that wasn’t holding onto Toffee and staying upright. The ride back to Horseshoe was bound to be an interesting one. She was just glad she hadn’t been alone to deal with it all.

June kept her eyes on the field ahead of them. Crossing through open land wasn’t her idea of a good time just then, but she didn’t raise up any dissent. She bit down on her molars and kept close to them.

Around her, the others mowed down the approaching law in equal measure. Some, with rifles. Others, pistols. Revolvers.

Sean threw a stick of dynamite that tore through two of the lawmen and half of a hill.

Before long, there was only two of the lawmen on their trail, beating across the farmland quick as rabbits on the backs of well-trained horses. They were more difficult to hit, and they were better shots, too.

Not that they managed to knock anyone off their horse. Neither did any more than graze one of John’s thighs — a wound that looked worse than it actually was.

Above them, there was nothing but inky black night. The dark sapped color from everything, turning a field of growing wheat into a field of upward-reaching bones. Even her blood turned black on her skin, like tar trailing down between her freckles.

Edwin led the charge, finding them a not-quite-winding path across a few roads and through some trees that were far enough apart to avoid any unfortunate collisions. Every now and then, he turned back in his saddle to make sure she was still there. He even flashed her a smile once, a sharp thing that fit him for the city boy he was.

“You good back there, Junie?”

Hugging close to Toffee’s saddle, her left hand firm on the horn to keep herself above it, she gave her head a nod. Then, the strength of her voice waning, she called up to him, “Y-yeah! I’m… I’m fine!”

“You don’t sound too fine.” Concern crackled at the edges of his voice. “You sure we don’t need to stop? We aren’t being followed.”

“Ohhh, don’t worry about her none.” If Sean had been any closer, he might have slapped a hand down on her left shoulder. The uninjured one. “The girl’s Irish. We need more than a bullet ta keep us down, now, don’t we?”

Juniper grunted as Toffee hit the bottom of a short hill. “For the last time,” she spat, “I’m not fucking Irish.”

Sean kicked his head back, laughing.

She didn’t need them to stop. She needed to be back at camp. She needed to see Victor, to get her arm looked at, and she needed to sleep. Fussing about pain would wait until the next day, when everything was hurting too badly to move. Only then would she let herself cry, that was for certain.

All the way back, each breath she took smelled of iron and smoke. She felt a throbbing in the wound, a cool numbness in her fingertips. Focusing on that made everything sharper, even as her body began to slow and the brilliance of the fight began to fade. There was nothing but passing trees and conversation.

Arthur pushed Amaranth a little faster to keep up pace with Coffee, Edwin’s horse and something of a distant cousin to Toffee. They didn’t know for sure; he’d stole them off his pa some years back.

John and Charles debated where the law had come from, whether or not they’d come in from the nearest train station when it didn’t arrive on time or what. That didn’t make any sense, but June didn’t say anything. They hadn’t held up the train for long enough for that to be how they were alerted to the crime. Had to be bad information, even if they’d gotten away with a few thousand dollars.

It was Sean who kept quiet — the biggest surprise of them all.

By the time they reached the camp, Juniper felt herself swaying on Toffee’s back. She hadn’t slipped, but her thighs trembled from holding on so tightly.

Dutch and Hosea greeted them, with Victor and a few others close behind. Charlotte peeked out from around Bill, who just looked plain pissed that he hadn’t been invited to go along.

Smiles and congratulations were passed around, from person to person, until Victor pushed past Hosea’s arm and approached her, noticing the poorly knotted tourniquet on her arm. “Why did none of you tell me that there was an injury?” he asked, accent crisp and annoyance crisper. He stepped up beside Toffee before gesturing to Dutch and then to Hosea. “Will one of you help Miss Scott down?”

It was Hosea who rushed forward. He was tall enough to reach up and grab her off of her horse and strong enough to bring her down and set her on her wobbly feet.

She tried her best to keep herself upright, weight focused on her heels.

“Don’t wanna… bleed all over your—” June gestured at the stiff collar of his shirt and his fine vest, “—uh, fancy clothes.”

Hosea’s laugh was quiet and dry, the kind that would’ve left him coughing if he hadn’t been so focused on keeping her stable. “Don’t worry about that,” he told her, pulling her left arm over his shoulders and looping his around her waist. “Your injury must not be very nasty, if you’re able to express some concern over my outfit.”

She ducked her head forward, braid sliding over her shoulder to dangle against her chest. “Hurts… a bit.”

“Just a bit?” Dutch stood in front of them, blocking their way despite the urgent look Victor wore on his face. “Your valiant efforts at making no grand circus of your _gunshot wound_ is appreciated, but not necessary.” His smile was brief. “You did a good job, Juniper. Thank you.”

He moved out of their way, allowing June and Hosea to being their uneven trek towards Victor’s tent. There was already a lamp burning inside. The cot had been cleared, and there the doctor was, already elbow-deep in equipment and medicines. It was just like him to be prepared, even if he believed the lot of them might very well return unharmed.

“It really is a shame about the bandanna,” Hosea murmured, nodding towards the band of bloody fabric tied around her upper arm.

Juniper hummed more than laughed. “It kept me for a few years.”

“Worth every penny, as far as I’m concerned.”

Warmth swam up into Juniper’s ears. A few years back, when she was just learning the ropes of being an outlaw, Hosea bought her one just outside of Shreveport, Louisiana. They didn’t often travel that far south, but sometimes, their jobs migrated in that direction. She remembered how sweaty she’d been when he handed it over to her after a day of working with the horses, swatting away mosquitoes. Then, he gave it to her and none of that mattered. Even the biting.

“We could always just wash it,” Juniper offered, her body tilting naturally towards his as her head swam. “It’s rust-colored, anyway. Won’t be able to pick out the bloodstains.”

As they approached the wagon, their pace slowed to a stop. Yellow light poured out over them from the oil lamp. It deepened the shadowed lines of his face, but it did a hell of a job with lightening his eyes.

Hosea turned towards her.

“Now, I know this wasn’t a lack of care on your part,” he said, sounding more serious than she’d ever heard him. And she’d heard him get serious before. “But… please, June. Next time—”

Maybe it was the loss of blood, or maybe it was the muggy memory from a few years back. Maybe she was just a fool in general. If you asked anyone, they’d say the last option was even more likely than the first. Almost a given. But, she didn’t think to ask anybody. She didn’t even really think as she lifted her hand, arm stiff, and twisted her fingers into the buttons of his shirt.

Pulling him forward took what was left of her energy.

She kissed him, lips clumsy, heart racing with a limp in her chest. That uneven thump was all she could hear as she moved her mouth against his, doing her best to recall all that she’d seen over the years to make it something better than a kiss to think back on with regret.

Not that it could be, since Hosea took the reins so easily, you’d swear she hadn’t even been holding them.

Around her waist, Juniper felt his arm tighten its grip, felt him pull her a step closer. She moved like she weighed nothing. Probably because she felt like that was true.

His lips tasted of nothing special. They were just lips, attached to a man she’d taken a shine to. As far as that went, they tasted good, even if there was nothing lingering in his mouth. That was better than her finding the smoke of a cigarette or a wash of coffee. Just lips. And, good Lord, what lips they were.

When he finally pulled away, Hosea wore a grin that was cheeky as it was smug.

“You look mighty pleased with yourself,” Juniper managed to choke out, her cheeks darker than the sun could ever get them. “We should, ah… The doctor. Victor’s waitin’.”

Hosea nodded, glancing towards the wagon. “Victor _is_ waiting.”

But he didn’t move. He didn’t bring her a single step forward. Instead, they stood there, looking at each other, ignoring the surge of whistles and hoots that followed the kiss. She didn’t want to think about what everyone had seen and how that would change things. She couldn’t.

Quiet passed between them. Juniper’s racing heart just wouldn’t calm down.

And then, with a dawning horror, she whispered: “I threw up.”

The skin around Hosea’s eyes wrinkled as he grinned, that smug smile of his shifting into something that was delighted without borders. Happy as the sky was big.

“I didn’t want to ask,” he told her as he brought her a little closer, his mouth meeting the highest point of her forehead, just under her fall of red hair. “That would’ve been rude, I thought. I’m glad you were honest with me.”

Juniper tucked her head up against Hosea’s shoulder and let go of a shaky sigh.

“We should prob’ly talk about this,” she said, muffled by his shirt, muffled by her growing smile. “Maybe after all this is dealt with. And once I get some sleep.”

“Almost certainly after you get some sleep.”

Hosea turned her towards the wagon again. She blinked into the swirling glow of the lamp and stared up at Victor, who hadn’t moved to interrupt them. He merely stood there, smiling a little, nodding in the direction of the cot.

“We shall get out that bullet now, yes?”

Thumbing over her bottom lip, Juniper stepped up into the patch of lamplight and out of the shadow.

No matter how much the removal of the bullet hurt, no matter how many hours she’d be forced to sleep in order to recover, no matter how big or how little her take would be from the job, there was a bright spot where the world was warmer.

A kiss, a small one.

Something to hold onto even when she began screaming.


	15. Charlotte V.

Upon reaching Valentine Station, Charlotte discovered that her package from Bianchi and White had arrived a few days prior.

And it was much larger than she’d expected.

Her eyes went wide as the postmaster opened the door to his office and carried out a crate rather than a catalog, marked with the familiar symbol of the art studio and supply store. The words were printed in bold white and surrounded by a delicate border of red on top of three black chevrons. “Do you have someone who can carry this for you, Miss Kilgore?”

Edwin stepped out from behind her, crouching to pull the crate up into his arms rather than waiting for her to clarify who he was. The postmaster grinned at him.

“Thank you, sir.”

Charlotte bobbed her head before pulling a dollar from the front pocket of her trousers and pressing it into his palm.

They turned and left without any further business. She hesitated for a moment by the door, her attention drawn by two older men sitting at the cards table at the corner of the station. It was bright out, but dark enough where they were to require a lamp, which just made the cards in their hands stick out more prominently.

She wanted to play. She could only thank God that that desire hadn’t progressed to a need.

The moment they pushed out into the midday sun, Edwin brought the crate over to the chuckwagon he’d been given to look over while the others traveled down south to the new camp. Pearson sat up on the seat, with Tilly and Uncle crowded inside with all their salted meats, their cans of vegetables, and their alcohol.

Charlotte lifted herself in beside Tilly and pulled the crate over to sit between her feet.

“What’s all that?”

Uncle leaned over to get a better look at the box, elbow crammed between two such crates. They had more boxes of food than any of them could ever eat through thanks to Arthur and the rest. The one in her possession was different, filled with things that weren’t for eating. At least, that’s what she hoped. The men at Bianchi and White weren’t tricksters. They wouldn’t go so far as to disappoint her.

“I sent for a catalog some weeks ago,” Charlotte explained to him, sidling slowly over her words to keep from sounding too concerned with herself. That was always an issue with speaking among the others. Every time she opened her mouth, she was worried that someone would take offense. At her tone, at her words, at her diction — she never knew for certain what would cause the problem. “I’m a painter, you see, but my supplies were stolen from me before I ever ran into Mister Van der Linde. He was kind enough to offer me a small loan from his own pocket rather than having me go through Herr Strauss, in order to purchase the things I needed in order to paint again.”

Tilly nudged the crate with the rounded toe of her boot. She seemed just as taken by curiosity as Uncle was, but her smile was even brighter. “Mighty big box for a catalog.”

The wood of the crate was smooth to the touch and painted an ashen shade of blue. Even the latch gleamed in the sunlight, bright and shiny and polished. Nothing about what she received was what she expected.

Just as she reached for the latch, Pearson whistled and shouted for the horses to get moving. Charlotte planted her boot down as she wagon began to roll, using a little leverage to keep both herself and the crate in place. Riding back there took some getting used to, but they had a few hours of driving left to go before they arrived outside of Rhodes.

With her fingertips, Charlotte flicked open the latch and looked up at Tilly, donning something of a smile herself as she lifted up the top.

“I don’t believe it’s a catalog,” she said.

All it took was a cursory glance downward to see that it wasn’t a catalog at all. No, the crate was full to the brim with supplies. Leaning against one of the crate’s sides was a stack of small, blank canvases, cut precisely to the same size as the ones she used in Saint Denis. Beside that, there was a large paintbox that she discovered was full of pre-ground pigments, brushes of varying sizes, a palette knife, and two generous jars of linseed oil.

Tucked carefully against the paintbox was a folded slip of paper.

Charlotte picked up the letter, her heart pounding. Generosity wasn’t easy to find anywhere in the world, but there, in America, she had found a few sparkling kernels of it. The lovely pair who owned Bianchi and White showed her plainly enough that such sweetness could be harbored in the hearts of men.

The letter only served to underline that fact. Fabrizio Bianchi wrote in such beautiful, emphatic language that Charlotte found herself grinning as she read what he had to say. His being ached for her, that such a fine woman had gone through such horrendous events in her young life. Bartered away. Widowed. Hunted relentlessly across all of Lemoyne.

He spoke favorably about the paintings she’d shown for them while she lived in the city, and he offered her something even better than a catalog — a chance at Independence.

Tilly leaned forward, tight curls bouncing every time the wagon so much as spied a rock on the road. She craned her neck to get a look inside of the crate and was awarded with a glimpse of something exciting. Her hands curled into the dandelion-yellow fabric of her skirt. The creamy lace that bordered the very edge of it matched the brightness of her smile. “They say anything about why they sent you all this?”

“They want me to send them my paintings through the post,” Charlotte murmured as she read over the letter a second time, eager to get everything right. “I need to come up with a false name, too, so I don’t get into any trouble out here when they start exhibiting and selling my work.”

Uncle tipped his head back and laughed, his already flushed face getting somehow even redder.

“When we finish setting up camp—”

Tilly snorted at his use of ‘ _we_.’

“When **we** finish setting up camp, you should paint ‘em a picture of me,” he offered, slapping one of his palms down against his knee. His fingers twitched after impact. “Show ‘em what the life of a real outlaw is like!”

While Charlotte suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, Tilly had long since tired of pretending to be sweet.

“I’ll have to be careful about what I paint,” Charlotte murmured to herself, thumbing over the edge of the letter. Twisting just far enough away from the subject at hand to avoid having to turn down the poor man was simple enough. “Nothing at camp. Nothing that could lead back to Dutch and the gang.”

Tilly nodded. So did Uncle, though he still seemed to be waiting on some confirmation that she’d paint him.

Charlotte ducked her head and busied herself with returning the letter to the crate and securing it between her ankles. They’d likely ache by the time they reached their new camp, but she didn’t mind. She felt… lighter. Almost like herself again, even in a pair of trousers with unwashed hair, even riding in the back of an old chuckwagon with patched holes in the canvas that still let in sun.

Before long, she would be painting again. Knowing that made sitting there for hours easier, made dealing with the heat simpler, made the upcoming weeks or months before they made their way down to Saint Denis look exciting.

Uncle’s banjo had been packed away in another wagon, but that didn’t stop him from singing. Nothing could stop him, Charlotte wagered. Up front, Pearson carried a tune in a bucket _without_ holes. He knew the song, but he knew the notes, too. That separated him and his singing from Uncle’s caterwauling in the back, with the rest of them.

Below everything, she could just barely make out the sound of Edwin humming.

Moving would have been difficult for her years — or even just months — before, when she was still accustomed to laying down her roots and staying put. She wasn’t the sort of woman who trailed from place to place, never settling down. Not like the rest of the Van der Linde gang. Before Saint Denis, she lived all her years in the home she was born in.

But now, when moving meant safety, Charlotte could understand putting security away for another day. There would come a time when she’d taste it again; she was sure of that.

If she knew the lyrics to the song, she might have sung along with them.

She _felt_ like singing.

Tipping her head back against the side of the wagon, Charlotte smiled to herself and pressed the crate more firmly between her feet. They’d be farther south by the end of the day, closer to the end of her ride with Dutch and his gang and closer to what she hoped might be freedom.

* * *

Clemens Point looked like every painting she’d ever seen of America.

By the time they arrived, everything was covered in a golden wash of light, from the calm waters of the lake to the up-turned leaves of the surrounding oak trees. There was enough room to set up camp and then some. It left enough space for all their horses and then some with space left to roam and graze.

‘Serene’ was a word she would use. Picturesque. Comfortable.

Word came back through Arthur and Charles that Clemens Point had been home to another gang not long ago. They’d cleaned things up as much as they could before heading back with the news. Somewhere, blood soaked into the ground, but the dirt was already red.

Nobody took any notice.

Dutch’s tent was already erected when the chuckwagon pulled into the clearing, with all the others no more than stacks of crates and folded up canvas. The gang’s leader stood outside of his lodgings, pipe lit with Molly sitting by his side. She was busy getting the very most out of her fan while the others worked to get things settled.

Pearson guided the wagon to the very center of the camp, somewhere accessible for anyone wanting a meal, and they were home.

Just like that.

“Better get a move on,” Tilly said as she stood, still bent halfway over to keep from smacking her forehead against anything. “Grimshaw will want us lookin’ after things.”

Uncle wasn’t so lucky. He thunked his head against a thin wooden beam with an _oof_ and nothing more.

Given that she was taller than both of them, Charlotte lifted her crate of painting supplies into her arms and scooted along the bench before dropping off at the very end. The heels of her boots sank into the grass when she landed.

They didn’t take two steps before they were joined by someone else. She caught only a glimpse of blonde hair and a flushed face before she knew for certain who it was.

“Oh, I always _dreamed_ of havin’ waterfront property!” Karen called out with a laugh so loud it startled a few nearby ducks into flight. She looped her arm through Tilly’s and cut a path through the wagons and horses to make a bee-line for the shore. “You gotta see this, Tilly. Arthur and Charles sure got lucky. We even got a dock!”

“Karen—I!”

But Karen didn’t listen, not even when Tilly protested.

Uncle pursed his lips in a low whistle before shaking his head, hand clapping over Charlotte’s shoulder. “Looks like you’ve got a lotta work to do.”

“What happened to ‘we’?” Charlotte asked, sounding more distracted than concerned.

He made an incomprehensible snorting noise and dropped his hand from her shoulder. “What happened to what now?” He took a few steps away, glancing back at her with a furrowed brow before laughing under his breath.

With another solemn shake of his head, he pressed on, making his way over to one of the trees that sprouted near the water’s edge. She heard him mumbling as he walked away: “Pretty girl, but strange.”

Charlotte twisted around and looked up into the back of the chuckwagon. There wasn’t much there to set up so much as set out, and Pearson routinely handled that. He didn’t trust many people with taking care of the gang’s food. When she turned back around, feeling more than a little lost, she found herself face-to-face with Madelaine.

The woman was only an inch or two shorter, but she carried herself with the confidence of someone seven feet tall. In the golden light, she almost looked like an angel.

Angel or not, she _was_ godsent in that moment.

“Need some help here, cher?” she asked, her fingers curled deep into the apron she wore around her waist.

Charlotte tipped a brow. “… Sha?”

Madelaine laughed and batted a hand at her. The corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled, and her nose did, too, making a mess of her pale freckles. “Dear, then, if that’s more to your liking.”

The Van der Linde gang couldn’t have been more diverse if it tried. Looking among them, there was no denying that. And they were all there, together, bound by the necessity of surviving. There was something beautiful in that, and that was a beauty no one could capture. Not with a camera, not with a paintbrush, not with a pen.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to set up a camp before,” Charlotte confessed. Her fingers itched to wring themselves out, but they were busy holding up the crate of goods from Bianchi and White. “I’m not quite sure what I should do… or even _how_ I could help.”

Madelaine gestured for Charlotte to follow her.

They weaved between the back of the chuckwagon and another pair of horses. “I’ve never set up camp, either,” Madelaine said with a smile shot over her shoulder. “It’s a messy and unorganized business, from the looks of things.”

Charlotte stared over at her. That didn’t make sense. Madelaine walked through camp like she’d done the work a thousand times before. She even passed alongside Miss Grimshaw without earning a nasty look from the woman. Those looks were saved up for Charlotte or Karen or even sweet Mary-Beth, no matter how diligent they were in their chores.

Not that they deserved a lashing for taking a much-needed break.

“How do you do it?” Charlotte asked without meaning to, her voice quiet as it slipped past her teeth.

Madelaine slowed. She pivoted, turning towards her in a ripple of skirt. “Set up camp?”

“Oh, no. I apologize. I meant—” Charlotte worried at her bottom lip and hefted the crate up a little higher in her arms. “I was only wondering how you’ve been able to… blend with them so easily. I was here for a week before you arrived, and I still feel as if I’m trying to mix water and oil.”

“See, that’s the trouble.” Madelaine shifted on the soft ground, smiling. Anyone with the blessing of sight would have caught her glancing towards Dutch van der Linde. “You got to stop thinkin’ of them as oil.”

Every now and then, someone said something what Charlotte knew would follow her for the rest of her life. She had words from her father carved into the walls of her heart. Words from Archer. Words from Angelo Bronte, spoken from across a sitting room while grief settled in her chest like dirt at the bottom of a river.

She never expected something like that to come out of Madelaine, some five or six years older and in the same situation as her.

“How do you do that?”

Madelaine shrugged. “If I had that wisdom, I’d tell ya. Just takes getting to know some of ‘em, I think.”

But the problem lay deeper than that. Charlotte was sure of it. The problem with her integration was that she’d been branded as temporary from the very first moment. Even back in Valentine, she spoke with Dutch as if she would leave the moment they split the money Archer left in that safe. No matter how comfortable she became, that comfort would leave her in the end. She knew that. They all did.

Charlotte followed Madelaine over to one of the stacks of supplies, still considering what she had to say.

There was nothing ‘lucky’ about either of them, but Madelaine didn’t _need_ the gang like she did. Perhaps that was the biggest difference between them. And that would not likely change.

Setting up camp took what remained of the day from them. The golden light waned, replaced with a silky blue night flecked with stars. Charlotte couldn’t have chosen which was more beautiful, not even if an answer was demanded of her. The gang ate in shifts, played cards in shifts. Javier and Juniper drew the attention of half a dozen or more with a high-stakes game of Five Finger Fillet. Even with her arm bandaged and her knife hand weak, she put up a fight, but Javier took the money and the golden pocket watch in the end.

Charlotte sat on her bedroll with the Bianchi and White crate at her feet, her belly full of rabbit and venison stew. It churned as it always did, unused to the powerful fattiness of it all.

But she wasn’t rushing to the line of trees any longer, which was a step in the right direction.

One day, Charlotte might step up to that poker table and show everyone what she was capable of, but there was a terror that trailed her when she thought of cards. Seeing it ruin her father, kill her husband, and dry her savings was enough to push her away, even if it hurt her down to the bones to see a red heart or a black spade without being able to reach out and touch them.

Footsteps drew her attention away from the poker table. She glanced in the direction of the sound to see Charles walking Taima over to one of the hitching posts.

She had a question for him. Nothing to do with setting up camp or making herself feel at home, but…

Charlotte grunted as she hefted herself up onto her feet, grateful for not having to contend with a voluminous skirt. Trousers were uncomfortably tight, but with time, the fabric eased and left her feeling lighter than before.

She hurried over to Charles, giving Brown Jack a passing pat on his muzzle as she rushed by. He worked his lips at her, as if expecting treats, but she carried none on her.

“Charles?”

The man hesitated where he stood beside his horse, hands held above the deer carcass strapped down across Taima’s croup. He looked over to her, dark eyes even darker in the moving shadows of an oak tree’s branches. He loosened the straps and removed the body, all fat and flesh, heavier than anything she’d ever lifted in her life. “Yes?”

He wasn’t gruff like the other men could be. Short, but not gruff.

“I was hoping that you could bring me out a ways from camp tomorrow,” Charlotte began, wringing out her hands. Her thumb dug against her palm, and when she smiled, that smile looked a little pained. The crate had given her a splinter, for all its many blessings. “I received a gift from the store I contacted in Saint Denis. I want to get painting as quickly as possible.”

Hefting the doe over his shoulder, Charles looked at her. “Why not tonight?”

“Tonight?” Charlotte blinked. “Why, there’s no light!”

As he passed beside her, he pointed the forefinger on his free hand to the sky. “There’s plenty of light,” Charles told her.

He wasn’t wrong. Above them, the moon was nearly full. Its silvery light was unlike what they’d seen while camped at Horseshoe Overlook, where there were too many clouds to properly appreciate what hung above them.

“I haven’t mixed my paint,” Charlotte offered, eagerly stretching for an excuse despite her powerful desire to work. It was late. The day had been longer than most, and she just wanted to rest. “I planned on doing that in the morning.”

“A sketch, then?”

Charlotte trailed behind Charles as he made for the chuckwagon. While everyone had been recuperating from the ride with food and games, Charles had broken off early. Eaten alone. Hunted rather than played. That seemed so very like him, but Charlotte found herself wanting to know more. If he did choose to do something recreational, what was it?

Hearts? Blackjack? Did he play a punishing game of Five Finger Fillet? Or was he more like Arthur, who spent his idle time with his journal and nub of a pencil? Did he drink, like Karen? Did he rush off to some nearby town to find someone to bed?

She didn’t know.

She wanted to know.

“I’ve never drawn in the dark,” Charlotte told him. When he glanced over his shoulder back at her, she ducked her head with a nervous chuckle. “I’ve never drawn by moonlight.”

“Then I’ll show you where to draw in the morning.”

Once the deer was hung by its back feet and Pearson drawn away from the fire to tend to the meat, Charles brought her back to Taima. The poor horse would not rest until later, but at least, she could have something to eat.

Charlotte lifted an apple to the horse’s mouth, watching with equal parts fear and delight as she snatched up the bright red thing with her lips and began to chew. Taima managed a few bites, snorting all the while, but dropped the apple down onto the grass before she could finish. There were chunks missing from it, giant swaths of skin pulled back to reveal the mealy inner flesh.

“Oh!”

To her left, she saw Charles watching her with an expression that was just as expectant as the one Taima wore on her long face.

Crouching down, Charlotte lifted the apple carefully into her hand and tried not to frown as she felt dirt and drool wiped off onto her skin. Living out there meant getting dirty. Riding with outlaws meant doing things she wouldn’t have even considered doing as a young girl.

That included picking up a chewed apple.

She offered the apple to Taima again. That time, the mare was a little hesitant, reaching with a certain amount of tenderness in her lips. Then, she picked it up with her teeth and proceeded to eat the thing whole.

“She’s enthusiastic!” Charlotte gave a short laugh, pride welling in her chest. She wiped her palm off on her trousers. “I hope I haven’t stepped out of line by feeding her.”

“Not at all.” Pulling himself up onto the saddle, he reached for Charlotte’s hand and aided her in lifting herself up onto Taima behind him. Charles kept quiet as she settled, but once she did, they were off. He moved them around the edge of the camp, down to the muddy shore and silken stretch of lake. “She’ll like you more for that.”

At a trot, she didn’t _need_ to hold onto him. The necessity wasn’t there, as long as she remained stable in the saddle, but that didn’t mean Charlotte kept her hands off of his waist. She curled them into the loose fabric of his vest and tilted her body forward just enough to lean against his back.

Taima took each step with care, following the shore at enough of a distance that her hooves didn’t sink with every footfall. In the dark, she trusted Charles to guide her through the sprouting trees and their whip-thin trunks, between silver-lined boulders, over low trickles of water that led outward from the lake.

“Where are we headed?” she asked, quieter when they were alone.

“There are few hills in this area,” Charles explained, one hand stroking alongside Taima’s powerful neck as they rode. At their pace, they couldn’t have covered more than a quarter of a mile. “But there is beautiful farmland out here. That… isn’t where I’m taking you.”

Charlotte ducked her head. A flush prickled at her cheeks.

She asked Charles because she was one of the few men at camp she trusted. After seeing how he reacted to Micah’s taunting and spending an hour or two with him, she knew enough to reach out to him when she needed something so simple.

Hearing him talk to her about what would make for a good painting in the area proved that she made the right decision.

“Over here, you can see clear across the lake at its widest point.” They slowed as Taima approached a break in the trees. Charlotte leaned forward to get a better view of what was in front of them, her chin brushing Charles’s shoulder. “I don’t know anything about painting, but…”

“It’s stunning.”

While their camp at Clemens Point had a wonderful view of Flat Iron Lake, it was nothing compared to the one Charles showed her.

Without the impenetrable orange glow of multiple fires or tents and lean-tos crowding the horizon, the night was darker than any she’d ever seen, but at the same time, it was so much brighter. The moon wasn’t silver; it was bone-white, and its light touched everything as far as they could see. And the quiet…

The hum of insects and the gentle lapping of water against the shore was all she could hear aside from their breathing.

“Will you paint this?” Charles asked.

Rather than answering, Charlotte lifted a hand to his shoulder and brushed over its broad curve with her fingertips. “Can you help me down? I want to stand a little closer.”

He did help her. When she hurried down to the shore, he followed, leading Taima only a few steps behind.

There was a group of three mismatched boulders beside the water. One was just broad and low enough for her to sit on, while the others rose alongside it like the arms of a chair. She was glad to have someplace to sit there. It would make the painting easier, as sitting in the mud was something she’d never see herself doing.

Charles stepped up to her right and stared out at the water, just like her.

Again, he asked, “Will you paint this?”

“Oh, yes,” Charlotte said, excitement a happy knot in her chest. “I don’t believe I could pass this up. Thank you for sharing it with me!”

A slow smile spread across his face, loosening that very knot and letting loose a warmth that stretched all the way down to her toes. Her fingers curled against the boulder’s porous surface, and she bit her lip to keep from grinning like a little girl.

“We can stay here for a while.”

Charlotte’s heart threatened to skip a beat, but only stumbled.

“I would like that,” she said.

She let herself grin.


	16. Madelaine VI.

Word of Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur’s exploits in Rhodes reached camp before they did.

On any other day, Madelaine might have worried for them, and the worry would have been twice as sharp after everything that happened around their old place at Horseshoe. But instead, she found herself perched at the edge of one of the old, battered chairs around the poker table with Josiah Trelawny sitting at her side, one elbow on the table and a bowl of Pearson’s stew mostly uneaten in his other hand.

“Why, such thrilling heroics I have never seen,” he insisted, brows rocking high above his dark eyes. “Granted, I wasn’t privy to most of it until later, given that I was still sitting aboard the prisoner wagon like the good boy that I am.”

Sean stood behind her. The stew in his bowl was almost gone, and only some of it was on his chin.

“Aye, the very best of ‘em,” he said with a bright burst of laughter. “Not a law-breakin’ bone in yer body.”

Trelawny shot the both of them a cheeky twist of a smile.

“I never claimed that much,” he continued. He set the bowl on the table and straightened himself out, his posture pristine and the lapels of his coat sitting pretty against his broad chest. “Only that I was as well-mannered as they come once the brutes sharing the wagon with me took flight. In the end, it was Dutch’s word that saved my skin, and I am _ever_ grateful to him for never failing to stick his neck out for me. Darling man.”

Madelaine pressed her lips together to keep from grinning herself. She had no reason to feel pride over what Dutch managed to do for one of his men; it was how he operated, how he did business.

But there was a flicker of something in her chest that didn’t care for what she should or should not feel.

“So, ya came back here to thank him?” Sean leaned one of his hands against the back of Madelaine’s chair. He wasn’t nearly heavy enough to tip the front legs upwards, but she felt the wood shift under her. “Or, is it you came wit hopes of helping him?”

Trelawny waved his spoon in midair. The silver had been licked clean mere moments before.

“I have only been in this lovely tumult of a state for weeks, but I can bet there are things I know that would benefit the gang.” He bowed his head forward. The pomade in his dark hair kept it from moving even an inch. “To answer your question, yes, I believe I can bring something to the table that might interest our illustrious Mister Van der Linde.”

Madelaine swished one of her feet against the grass before tapping her boot’s rounded toe against the ground. Beneath her, the earth was softer than up north, near Valentine. Drier, too, even with all the humidity. “Anything interesting?”

“Plenty, dear girl.”

Then, Trelawny said nothing else. He dined on his meal, dabbing at his mouth with the handkerchief he carried once he folded it over his fingers. Occasionally, he made a quiet, almost impressed noise before continuing on, spooning at his stew as if it was a delicacy rather than just something churned up at camp with what little they had.

She waited and waited and nothing came of that information he might have shared with them. Not until Sean stepped in, as Sean often did.

“Oi, Trelawny!” He kicked one of the legs of Telawny’s chair, giving the man enough of a start that he dropped he spoon. The utensil clattered against the lip of the bowl. “Ya can’t say someting like that and not give us a nibble.”

The magician busied himself with sopping up the splattered stew with his handkerchief, muttering something along the lines of _rude_ and _damned Irishmen_ just loud enough to make Madelaine laugh and Sean grind his teeth. Once he was satisfied with the state of himself and his place at the table, Trelawny folded up the soiled square of fabric and looked up at him.

“Old money, new money — Rhodes has all of it,” Trelawny began. He sounded more obstinate than wounded, but the desire to dine in peace was still there, riding beside him in silence. “Most notably, in the names of Gray and Braithwaite.”

Idle curiosity turned to a lining of lead in Madelaine’s stomach.

She swallowed hard before shifting farther to the front of her seat, her body tilting naturally towards his. When she spoke, her voice betrayed her at first, going out quick as a lit fuse under wet fingers. Finding it again took clearing her throat and sitting up a little straighter. “No. We can’t be dealing with any Braithwaites.”

“Pardon me?”

Sean leaned down far enough to tuck into the corner of her eye. He was a blur of red hair and little else, not with her sights focused solely on Trelawny. “Ooh, now, that’s a right curious thing ta say.”

“I…” Her words stuck at the back of her tongue; they dug in their heels and refused to budge, making truths bunch up in her mouth like a kicked up rug. “Just trust me. They’re bad news.”

“Mm, and do you believe ‘bad news’ has ever stopped Dutch van der Linde in his tracks?” Trelawny tutted. “Or done anything save for encourage him?”

Madelaine’s shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. “I doubt it,” she told him. “I haven’t been with the gang long enough to know either way, so I’m guessing you’re more certain than I am. It’s just… I know of the Braithwaites. I never dealt with them myself, but I know they’re not worth their trouble. No matter how much money they had before the war.”

Sean shifted over to stand behind Trelawny’s chair. He wanted a better view of what might slip right out of her hands.

“ _Before_ the war, you say.” Trelawny pushed his coat back and tucked his handkerchief into one of the front pockets of his trousers. “While that is undoubtedly true, the Braithwaites are still wealthier than any other family for miles, save for the Grays.”

“And they ain’t worth getting involved with!”

Anger didn’t rise up inside of her; pleading welled in her voice rather than rage.

She was glad that Trelawny didn’t seem to be in the business of poking at her or goading her on. Even Sean’s usually insatiable need to start trouble seemed quelled for the moment. Not that he took his eyes off of her, and not that he ever looked quite convinced that she didn’t have something else to say, something she was keeping locked inside of her chest.

But that key was waiting for a steadier hand, one she trusted, one she hoped would listen to her.

Or, at the very least, let her help.

Madelaine stood from the table and brought her skirt with her, one of her hands twisting deep into the fabric’s folds until her knuckles bled of color. Her fingers ached, rubbed raw and sore from washing the chuckwagon’s canvas cover. The ride in left it all kinds of dusty, which didn’t exactly make for good eating.

Still, the pain wasn’t nothing compared to the worry that seethed over her then, like some kind of errant hurricane, but they were too far from the shore for it to be a real storm.

She’d barely set two feet on the ground away from the both of them when she saw something on the lake. Three men, too far away for her to recognize their faces, but heading in their direction. That was all she needed to know precisely who they were, and she set off, hurrying across the uneven ground to the dock and the muddy shore.

Once she reached the very end, Madelaine lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun.

One of the men on the boat — Dutch, from his colors — lifted a hand to wave rather than mimic her, his rings glinting in the light.

The Braithwaites primarily worked in moonshine. She remembered that from conversations mama and daddy had under the quiet of night. She remembered trips down south to Lemoyne and the gifts that followed — a new dress and books for her, cosmetics brought in from New York and Paris for her mother. Things they couldn’t rightly afford until he started working with that damned family.

Took working with them for death to find her daddy, too.

Catherine Braithwaite was in the business of alcohol, but her son, Gareth Braithwaite, was into a lot more than that. There was a lot of pain in Rhodes, and there were a lot of desperate folks, eager to have those pains stop tailing them quite so close.

By the time the boat arrived at the dock, Madelaine’s heart had taken to hammering in her chest.

“Well, hello there, Miss Madelaine,” Dutch greeted her with something of a chivalrous bow with no care to how the boat rocked as Arthur drove it up onto the shore. “Nice of you to greet us and our glorious bounty.”

Arthur stood all of a sudden, oars in-hand, shaking the boat hard enough to Dutch stumble. She’d never seen him wheel on someone quite so quickly.

“Now, what’d you do that for?” Dutch shouted, torn between chastising the man and laughing. Eyes on Arthur, he gestured towards Madelaine with both hands outstretched. “Did you not see that I was speaking to the lady?”

“I saw plenty of what you was doin’.” Setting the oars down on the dock, Arthur pulled himself up onto the halfway rotted wood with a grunt. He scratched at his chin and watched as Hosea and Dutch turned to follow him. In the end, he held out his hand to Hosea, who gave him a grateful nod before hoisting himself and a dripping sack of fish up out of the boat. “Saw plenty of what you shouldn’t be doin’, too.”

Dutch didn’t have to wait for Arthur to help him out of the boat. He had too much of an ego to wait for _anyone_ , much less someone who’d just made him stumble like a foal learning to walk.

That ego of his let Madelaine’s outstretched hand pass, though. She was grateful for that.

Her fingers slipped against his palm as he stepped up from the boat. And while he didn’t put much of his weight onto her, he allowed her to help. That nameless something in her chest glowed with a touch more heat after that.

His long legs pulled them close together once he was on more stable, if slowly crumbling, ground.

Everything seemed to sway around them, but that might have been from the way her heart was still racing.

Dutch laughed and gave head a shake, flinty curls jostling at the nape of his neck. “Thank you for your assistance,” he murmured, his fingers squeezing briefly around hers before he let go and stepped away. “Is there something you need? Something happen at camp while we were gone?”

Nothing. Just words and worries. Just names and overwrought nerves.

“Mister Trelawny arrived about an hour ago,” Madelaine said, rubbing her raw hand over the hem of her opposite sleeve. “Said something about the families ‘round here. The Grays and the Braithwaites?”

Around them, Hosea and Arthur broke off to tend to other things. Hosea carried his bag of fish to Pearson, while Arthur made for his wagon and the feet dangling off the edge of his cot, likely to tend to his bruised knuckles and their broken skin. It made sense that Dutch was untouched, but that wouldn’t be the case for very long.

“Never did I think to expect a Shakespearean plot afoot in Lemoyne, of all places,” Dutch said with a laugh, resting one of his hands at the middle of her back to coax her into following him. The moment she moved to do so, he pulled back. Likely on account of what Arthur had told him moments before. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or spitting mad. “There might even be a forbidden romance in the works, if what I heard implied at the sheriff’s station holds any weight.”

Madelaine’s nose wrinkled, and Dutch caught just enough of that expression to bring a smile to his face.

“Not one for Shakespeare, are you?” He nodded, more to himself than to her, and fished his watch from the front pocket of his vest. Thumbing over its face, he let go of a hoarse laugh. “Neither am I. Give me an author with dirt under his nails, one who’s lived a life like ours or simply harnesses a greater understanding of man. Intellect joined with realism and a dash of hope? I would take that over anything else.”

“It isn’t that.” Madelaine tugged at her sleeve once more before twisting on the toes of her boots towards Dutch. The wind coming off of the lake tugged its fingers through her skirt, sending it rippling away from her feet. “It’s the Braithwaites. Just the Braithwaites.”

Focus fell over Dutch’s expression. There was a redness in his cheeks and nose from a day spent out in the sun, along with orange dirt clinging to his crow’s feet and the layers of his clothes. He stared at her, the waning light of the sun deepening his already dark brown eyes. All of her worries and her memories of past whispers of that damned family’s name faded to a hum, not nearly loud enough to be a bother.

His voice was what brought her back, quiet though it was.

“What is it about the Braithwaites that’s got you so concerned, Madelaine?” A wrinkle formed between his brows. “You know something.”

Madelaine tucked her shoulders back and took a deep breath. Striving to shove past the anxious nature her past gave her was difficult, but she’d do it for Dutch. She was starting to learn just how much she _would_ do for him. “Just that one of the Braithwaite boys has been selling more than moonshine for near on ten years.”

“Your scoundrel of a daddy…”

“—provided him with the means to bring a powerful amount of opium and morphine to Lemoyne.”

Dutch bobbed his head slowly. “And did this Braithwaite boy ever meet you? Have you had any direct contact with this family of theirs?”

“None at all.”

They stopped at the back of Dutch’s tent. He reached out and touched over the curve of her shoulder, fingertips light as anything, barely disturbing the fabric of her sleeve. “What do you want from this, Madelaine? We are in an enviable position here near Rhodes, and I want you to tell me if I can do anything for you.”

What did she want?

There was no bringing her daddy back, not that she was even concerned with that as a possibility. He was a wretched man, even for all his love, and it was his wretchedness that put him in the ground. That gunshot was nothing but the period at the end of another bloody sentence. If anything, he proved to her that evil could succumb to evil just as easily as good.

“I wanna be involved,” Madelaine said, the rounded tip of her chin shoved sharply upwards. “I wanna watch ‘em get what they deserve.”

“Then, you’ll be involved.” He gestured in the direction of the chuckwagon, of Hosea and Pearson. “Talk to Hosea about going along with him to the Braithwaite place. You are _sure_ to see that reckoning soon enough, once we scrape a little off of the top.”

Dutch parted with a single pat on her shoulder, but there was something different in his eyes. Something that, if distilled down to its essence, would taste like awe.

“Go and see Hosea,” he reminded her before stepping into his tent.

She caught a single glimpse of Molly tilting her head up, a slow smile spreading across her lips. A word and a look from Dutch and her eyes snapped sharply downward, catching Madelaine standing there, and then, the canvas fell shut.

Madelaine tried not to think of that look as she made for Hosea.

Their relationship could scarcely be called one. They spoke once or twice around Pearson’s cooking pot or while she fetched water for the washing basin, but never at length. Never about themselves. He seemed to be a kind enough man, if just as prone to outbursts of anger as the rest of them. Quick to pull a gun on Bill Williamson. Quicker still to knock chair legs out from under Micah Bell.

But with the women, he was gentler and more understanding, unless they weren’t doing their share or pulling their weight.

Hosea glanced up from the spread of bluegill and largemouth bass when Pearson lifted a hand to her in greeting, calling out her name as she approached with a wide grin on his face.

“Do you care much for fish, Miss Madelaine?” Pearson asked her, gesturing towards the half-dozen lined up on his chopping block, still fully scaled and leaking watered-down blood. One of the fish in particular stared up at her with its unsettling glass eye. “I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but—”

Hosea spoke without looking up from the bluegill he was gutting.

“She’s from Louisiana,” he said by way of an explanation. His knife slid into the belly of a bluegill, slicing the flesh apart as easily as cutting through warm butter. Hooking his forefinger past the split in its stomach, he pulled out a knot of guts easily and cleanly. Then, he passed the carcass to Pearson for the man to begin working the scales off with a duller knife. “Our Madelaine must be something of a connoisseur when it comes to seafood. Don’t ask her if she likes fish. Ask her, ‘How do you like your fish?’”

Madelaine hummed thoughtfully as she stepped up beside Pearson. She unbuttoned the sleeves of her blouse before rolling them up over her forearms and reaching for another of Pearson’s knives. The one she grabbed was skinnier. Sharper.

The Braithwaite business could wait. Or, rather, she could work while talking to him. Better that than not having anything to do with her hands.

“You can’t go wrong with a fish sauce piquante,” Madelaine began, tapping against the weather-softened wood of Pearson’s table as she waited for him to finish with that poor fish. Water and scales flicked in every direction, flying off of the carcass like they’d been shot. “Dipped in milk and rolled in cornmeal? Fried? Lord, that’s good eating.”

Hosea pressed a hand to his stomach, his fish gutting stalled out by a sudden onset of hunger. “I never spent enough time down South, as far as I’m concerned. What about you, Pearson?”

“Well, I’ve spent some time near New Orleans, but not long enough to learn all of the recipes,” Pearson said with a laugh. He handed the scaled fish off to Madelaine. “I know Saint Denis a little better. The cuisine isn’t too different, as far as I can tell.”

Madelaine pinched the tail end of the fish, but didn’t make the first cut. Instead, she looked at Pearson. Stared at him.

The chuckle that bubbled out of Hosea was the most charming sound she’d heard in a while. It wasn’t often that people who were born running understood the loyalty someone could feel to one’s home state.

“You might consider rephrasing,” Hosea offered, as a true diplomat would.

Pearson’s already pink cheeks flushed a richer shade of red. The same could have been said for his ears, his nose, and the back of his neck. The poor man turned into a boiled crawfish, right in front of her eyes. “I, ah… I’m sure the food in Saint Denis is nothing but a trussed up knock-off of cajun cooking. I’m sure of it.” He nodded more than he needed to.

Deep in her chest, Madelaine felt laughter begin to bubble up, pushing past those feelings she’d trapped behind her teeth not an hour earlier. Not thirty minutes. It was a powerful thing, amusement.

There was nothing funnier than the idea that she was some sort of cajun banshee, ready to put her knife into anyone who so much as mentioned Saint Denis in her presence. A furious nymph who trailed through swampland and left footprints sticky with cane syrup. A fairy queen who kidnapped children from their beds to work themselves to death over a ghostly pirogue.

She was nothing but a woman who missed home.

Sliding the knife between the fish’s flesh and its skin, Madelaine hummed. Her lips twisted sideways and pushed together, unable to keep a tune when she was baring her teeth.

“If we head any further south, maybe Charles will kill us an alligator,” she said. Cutting through a bluegill wasn’t hard work. The flesh was tender and flaky, and the skin wasn’t overly clingy, just a bit slick. “You wanna talk about good eating…”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Pearson slammed the heel of his palm onto his chopping block. The utensils and cookware hanging nearby shook, clattering a quick tune to match his excitement. “I know how to cook alligator. There’s no better seafood, in my eyes. Not unless you can get your hands on a nice haul of crawfish.”

The sun was nearly set by the time the fish was cleaned and ready to be salted or cooked up with dinner. Madelaine listed off the ingredients Pearson would need for a sauce piquante, only to discover that they had plenty of them. They lacked the peppers and onions, but they had enough canned tomatoes and seasonings otherwise to make something that was almost passable. It’d be bread rather than rice, but she didn’t mind that. There was no sense balking over what couldn’t be on the road.

She and Hosea were dunking their hands in the washing basin when the subject of the Braithwaites finally arose, once the laughter had died down, once they’d found themselves alone.

“Dutch told me to talk to you,” Madelaine began.

Before she could finish her explanation, Hosea’s thin-lipped mouth twisted into a wry smile. “We’ve been talking this whole time, Madelaine.”

“Not about the Braithwaites.” Madelaine drew her hands out from the cold water and wiped them dry on her apron, not bothering to go easy on the raw parts of her palms. “He told me to talk to you _about the Braithwaites_. I wanna go with you when you start sniffing around their plantation.”

“Mm. Braithwaite Manor,” Hosea corrected her. “It’s not a plantation any longer.”

Madelaine snorted, rolling her eyes. “Call it what you want. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got slaves working in the fields or not. They still got a plantation.”

The less-than-infinite patience Hosea kept in his back pocket held. He gave a whistling laugh, head shaking just hard enough to whip up his shock of white hair. When he moved to stand beside rather than in front of her, there was a softness in his eyes. He’d been kinder to everyone of late, even Bill. Only Micah seemed to miss his newly discovered benevolence.

God bless Juniper Scott and all the magic she worked on that man.

“Anyway.” He rested his hands high on his narrow waist, regarding her with what looked to be an open mind. “Why are you so interested in coming along with me?”

“My daddy worked for the Braithwaites.” Madelaine felt as if that was all she’d said since she stood up from the poker table with Josiah and Sean staring at her like she had two heads. “He supplied one of Catherine Braithwaite’s sons with drugs to sell along with his liquor. At least, until Gareth Braithwaite as good as shot him.”

Interest flickered in Hosea’s eyes. He shifted forward on one of his feet, jaw working before he truly found his words. “And you’re certain it was a Braithwaite that killed your father.”

“He might not’ve pulled the trigger himself, but the man who killed him had ta get directions from somebody.”

“Too true, too true.”

She watched as a muscle in Hosea’s jaw twitched. She watched as he stared outward, like he’d find his answer among the grazing horses rather than written on her face. She watched, and she waited. Some part of her knew that taking her along might mean trouble, and that was trouble she didn’t know how to get out of.

But she wanted to be there. She wanted to look Gareth Braithwaite in his eyes and see what her daddy’s blood was worth.

Less than nothing, Madelaine wagered, but it was the principle of it all.

“Take me with you,” she pressed. “I don’t mind staying with the camp most of the time, but this means a lot to me.”

Hosea opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by a pair of voices that rose from conversational to damn near caterwauling. It wasn’t Karen and Shaun, nor was it Abigail and John. That night, it was Dutch and Molly at each others’ throats. The quiet bickering between them was bound to only last so long. Everyone had their limit.

Tension snapped her shoulders back, straining at the already sore muscles that ran the length of her spine. Ringing her hands through her apron again, Madelaine kept her eyes on Hosea rather than looking over at the mounting mess she couldn’t quite make out.

She couldn’t quite pick out any particular words, not above the strum of Javier’s guitar and a rowdy conversation between Edwin and Juniper, but she knew what fury sounded like. She knew what heartbreak sounded like, too.

Tension paired nicely with guilt.

“If nothing else, you deserve a chance to meet the people your father was involved with,” Hosea said, glancing toward Dutch’s tent with a low, weary laugh, “for no better reason than for all the _shit_ you’ve stirred up between Dutch and Miss O’Shea.”

The smile Madelaine put on then was tight enough to make her jaw ache.

“Thank you, Hosea,” she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mary-Beth splitting her attention between her and the tornado in Dutch’s tent. Heat pinched at her cheeks. “Just tell me when you plan on heading out.”

Madelaine took a step away from Hosea. At that very moment, the flaps of Dutch’s tent flew open and he emerged, pipe clutched in his broad-knuckled hand.

Their eyes met.

That day was nothing but eyes meeting and _my daddy worked with the Braithwaites_. With the sun setting over the lake, there wasn’t much hope of it being anything more than that.

Dutch stood there, the heels of his boots rooted into the ground, and she stood there, staring.

There wasn’t anything else for her to do.

Ducking her head down, Madelaine crossed the camp’s clearing and made for the scout fire. There, she found a place between Edwin and Juniper where it was warm. There, she focused on the chance Hosea was giving her — a shot at vengeance for her mama and herself, if no one else.

Neither of them mentioned Dutch. They didn’t give her a reason to worry about _that_ mess, either.

Bumping her shoulder against Edwin’s shoulder, Madelaine smiled to herself and thought about warmth rather than romance or heroics.

For just a moment.


	17. Juniper VI.

 

Watching everyone head off in every which way wouldn’t have felt so bad if June had _decided_ not to go with them.

Even Dutch was getting in on the action, what with his shiny deputy’s badge and all, and she was stuck there, at the tail end of healing, staring across the camp at Reverend Swanson as he worried at the soft, leather corners of his bible. Everybody knew there weren’t nothing to read in there so much as inject, but nobody said nothing. It wasn’t their business.

Javier was off with Karen, robbing one coach or another. Dutch took Arthur and Bill along with him to Rhodes to stretch their legs and their recent upward swing in the law’s esteem.

Even Hosea was heading out, with Madelaine at his heels rather than her.

Her arm was nothing but stiff. She didn’t have the sling anymore, and Victor only changed the bandages once a day rather than hovering over her like a stormy, half-Austrian cloud so she didn’t get all infected.

Working a piece of gum around in the back of her teeth, June slammed her feet down to the ground from where they’d been on the table, kicking up a puff of dirt that settled just as fast. Finding something to do around camp wasn’t a difficult task. Back on her ranch, she did all manner of things to keep herself busy. Most of them weren’t possible with just one hand, but she could use both. She just had to be delicate about it.

Her nostrils flared.

She wasn’t feeling none too gentle. She _felt_ like a caged up cougar, like prowling was the only thing she could do to keep from going stir-crazy and doing something drastic.

Madelaine sat on the seat at the front of one of their wagons. She looked almost sick with anxiety, and June couldn’t blame her. After that night when Hosea and the others went fishing, Dutch and Molly had been at each other’s throats. Or, rather, they’d been needling at each other time and again, poking at all their sensitive spots. Most of the camp didn’t care, but Madelaine went stiff as a board when Molly raised her voice or when Dutch shouted her down. It was a nasty business, getting involved with someone who belonged to someone else.

June counted herself lucky that Hosea had been just as lonely as she was.

Leaning up against the driver’s seat, Juniper lifted her right arm as gingerly as she could, tipping her hat back away from her eyes with her curled forefinger. “Miss Madelaine.”

“June,” Madelaine offered with a smile, the pinched twist of her lips easing as she leaned over in the seat to get a better look at her. Her fingers curled around the handlebar, feet kicking out under the rusty red hem of her dress. “Are you coming with Hosea and me?”

“Nah, not today.”

Madelaine’s shoulders sank and so did her expression. “That’s a real shame.”

“Tell me about it.” June hefted herself up onto the seat, laughing under her breath as Madelaine scrambled back to give her enough room to swing a foot up. “I’d do just about anything to get outta this camp.”

A moment of quiet passed between them from hand to hand before Madelaine whispered, “Tell me about it.”

“Glad you’re getting out, then,” June offered, nudging Madelaine’s elbow with her own before sitting back. It was early enough in the day that the sun hadn’t quite made it past the trees, leaving a dappled glow on everything but little else. Even down there near Rhodes, the air was thick and humid, but chilly enough that she could catch her breath on the wind at any time before noon. She shut her eyes, head tipped back, almost able to let herself believe that she was heading into town with them. The only thing that was missing was the sound of hooves beating against the ground. “Y’all are tryin’ ta get more information on the Braithwaites? Ain’t Rhodes almost all Grays?”

If Madelaine nodded, she didn’t see her. All she felt was a slight sway on the seat, and all she heard was the sound of a quiet affirmative in Madelaine’s throat.

“Hosea says we might get more information off’a them than any Braithwaites we might come across.”

June opened her eyes again, turning to look over at Madelaine as she spoke.

“People are willing to talk ‘bout their enemies more than their friends, he says.”

The laugh Juniper gave then was low and hoarse, almost painful-sounding. She pushed her hat back down over her eyes, unable to keep from grinning. Because… “Yeah, that sounds like Hosea.”

“What sounds like me?”

Hosea tossed an armful of burlap sacks into the back of the wagon to join the half-dozen empty wooden boxes that were already there. He wore a flat clap, the fabric worn out around its edges, and a bright blue vest with the white shirt beneath buttoned up to his neck. That wasn’t all. He wore a smile, too, one that was broad enough to crease the soft skin of his face.

His hand rested on Juniper’s narrow thigh before he gave it a pat. “Good morning, June.”

“Mornin’,” was all she had to give him in return, warmth spreading up from where he touched her. The urge to reach out and rest her hand on his was a powerful one, but she managed to wrestle it down, in the end.

Madelaine leaned over again, that time across June’s lap so she could see Hosea where he stood.

“We were just talkin’ about what you said earlier, when I asked you why we were goin’ into Rhodes rather than just heading up to the plantation. We’ll learn more from the Grays, right?”

“We’ll learn more from the Grays,” Hosea confirmed, his hand falling away from Juniper’s thigh. “Are you coming with us?”

Juniper shook her head. “Won’t be no use to either of ya. Not yet.”

“The plan isn’t to take this information from them by force, June, dear. We intend to charm it from them, bit by bit.” That smile of his was charming enough to make a girl slide right off of the driver’s seat, dropping down only a few inches from him. “You could help us with that.”

“You know I’m no good at charmin’ folks.” Juniper jerked her chin up at the seat and Madelaine. “You go on with the pretty lady. The whole town’ll be jawing by lunchtime.”

Hosea climbed up onto the seat without any more prodding. He knew Juniper’s strengths, and he knew her obstinate nature was one of them. There was power in that stubborn streak of hers that even he couldn’t contend with. So, he settled down beside Madelaine and took the reins carefully in-hand. The horses were getting antsy, but no antsier than Maddie.

She gave one of their spotted flanks a pat before giving them their space, moving off to prowl around elsewhere. There must have been somewhere, some place for her to stretch out or some work for her to do.

“June?” Hosea called out rather than snapping the reins and clicking his tongue. His voice stopped her in her tracks. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Juniper turned towards him with her head cocked to the side. It took her all of a fleet-footed second for her to realize exactly what he was talking about, with how he curled over the edge of the seat and bent down just far enough for her to reach.

Hurrying back over to the wagon, Juniper rocked up onto the balls of her feet. She smashed her hat down against her head to keep it from falling off when she craned her neck back.

The kiss was a chicken’s peck of a thing, but there was no ignoring the wobble in her knees when she fell back onto her heels.

Just before the wagon set off, she heard Madelaine whisper something about _sweetness_ that left Juniper’s cheeks flaring up red. There was nothing sweet about sticking around camp. She couldn’t use her rifle. She couldn’t charm. And every time she reached for something, Victor showed up, haunting her like a ghost, trailing her like a shadow.

John was doing fine. There was nothing more than a hitch in his step, a rock where there hadn’t been one, and despite Victor’s orders, Abigail was on his tail about not doing much around camp.

There were two types of people at Clemens Point.

Those who were working, and those who couldn’t work and hated themselves for it.

Whenever Juniper and John’s eyes met, they shared a miserable look and nothing more. There wasn’t anything to say ‘cept more complaining, and those words left June’s mouth feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton.

Both of the fires were still going, newly kindled and stocked with mostly-dry wood that occasionally sent flurries of embers up into the air. Next to the reverend, Charlotte sat with one of her blank canvases on her lap, sketching over it with the short nubbin of a pencil Dutch gave her. Ever since they set up camp, she hadn’t seen Charlotte without her paints. The girl was working herself to the bone, and the fabric of her dress was covered with evidence of that.

Orange and red pigment stained the lace around her sleeves. A dried splatter of white bunched at the dingy blue-gray fabric of her skirt, a remnant of some clumsy slip of her hand.

Beside her, sitting on one of the bedrolls rather than a chair, was Charles.

While Charlotte drew, Charles fletched his arrows and Swanson spoke to them in hushed, nervous tones. Whether he repeated scripture from his addled memory or simply spoke about the happenings at camp, June wasn’t close enough to tell. She only watched as Charlotte occasionally glanced up from her work to nod at him, to smile, to encourage him to keep talking.

There was a patience in that girl that June couldn’t comprehend. She didn’t have any problem with Swanson, but she didn’t have any time for him, neither.

Only when Swanson stood and wandered off in the direction of the horses and Kieran did Juniper go over to them, collapsing down onto one of the low chairs and hugging her arm against her stomach. There wasn’t any pain, but jostling it sure wasn’t comfortable.

“How’s that… painting coming along?” she asked.

The fire popped. Charlotte curled one of her hands around the edge of her canvas and looked up, smiling. “It’s just a little something that I planned on working on while the other dried,” she said, sitting up a little straighter. A tightness sat around her mouth, making her look a little drawn even when she smiled. She had to be uncomfortable on such a narrow chair, what with how broad she was, but June didn’t say nothing about that. She was impatient and coarse and all manner of things, but she wasn’t cruel.

Anyone who said something like that with Charles around was risking life and limb, regardless of their intentions.

“I want to complete a few works before sending them to Saint Denis.” Beneath her skirt, her boots shifted on the dirt, toes pinched together. “I’m hoping that Bianchi and White are able to sell them.”

“They’ll sell them,” Charles said, not an interruption so much as a quiet, encouraging footnote.

Charlotte bobbed her head.

“I want to start on this one before dusk. The lighting in afternoon would be perfect.” She lifted the canvas and turned it around in her hands, showing June the pale lines of lead over the textured surface. It looked strange, seeing a painting without any paint. Like looking at somebody’s bones. The lake looked just like a lake, which wasn’t surprising. Slightly off-center was a lifelike drawing of a duck. “I will need to catch this particular waterfowl in order to get the colors right.”

Juniper smacked her gum between her teeth, leaning against the chair’s low back. “Now, I don’t know about catchin’, but I can kill you a duck, if you need one.”

She watched, amused, as Charlotte’s eyes snapped down to Charles.

“I told you,” he said, brows lifting as he set another of his arrows aside. “There’s no harm in killing an animal you plan on using. I don’t think anyone would turn down more fresh meat.”

This was a conversation they’d had before.

“So, can I get you that duck?”

Charlotte looked to her, cheeks flushed, and nodded after some hesitation. She was a sweet girl, even after all she’d seen. That wouldn’t last. And if it did, there’d be bigger things to worry about.

“Alright.” June rocked up onto her feet from the chair, not caring about resting so much as getting something done. She’d rested. She’d kept her rifle out of her hands and crime out of her head, and now, she wanted to go hunting, even if it was just for some painting. “Let’s go get you a duck, then, Miss Charlotte.”

No one paid much mind to her as she crossed the camp again. Everyone was either gone or distracted or in on the whole plan. Jack read while Abigail watched him read, and the other girls were sleepily attending to chores and breakfast. And Victor… Well, Victor had just pulled his wagon’s canvas back after what must’ve been a much-needed sleep.

Rather than heading right to her rifle, she slipped around behind John Marston instead, giving him a sharp prod in his ribs rather than saying anything.

He squirmed to the side and slapped her hand away with a hoarse, “The hell are you doing?”

“I need you for somethin’,” June said.

“And you thought the way to getting me to do something for you was stabbing me with your bony fingers?”

She rolled her eyes skyward and crowded behind him, using the flats of her palms to guide him a few steps towards the wagon and towards Victor. “I’m doing somethin’ for Charlotte, so I need you to distract ‘im.”

“Distract Victor?” John’s laugh was more of a huff of air than anything else. “You know that’s impossible.”

“Come on. As a favor.”

John didn’t dig his heels in, which was June’s first hint that he’d agree eventually. If he took some more prodding, she’d be alright with that. She could manage a bit more prodding.

“Fine.” He twisted, nearly knocking her in the forehead with his shoulder. “A favor for a price.”

Juniper stopped.

“Name it.”

“You cover my watch for me tonight, and I’ll do what I can.”

That was enough for her. She didn’t mind taking watch. She didn’t sleep much as it was; there wasn’t any such thing as a comfortable sleeping position with an injury like hers. She agreed to his terms and sent him off, watching him lean his rangy body against the side of the wagon and offer Victor a peach he picked up off of the chuckwagon along the way.

No one could ever tell her that Marston didn’t know romance.

When she rejoined Charles and Charlotte by the fire, the former bundled his arrows and gave her a look. “Are you sure you should be doing this?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The wound don’t do nothin’ but ache.”

“Good.” Charles pushed himself up onto his feet. “That’s all I needed to know.”

Juniper was beyond grateful for men who didn’t needle her, didn’t pry. She could have kissed Charles for not asking her any other questions right then, or demanding that she stay behind. A bow would be of more use against a duck, but she didn’t know how to use any kind of bow and she’d already volunteered, rifle included.

Beside him, Charlotte stood and reached for her paintbox, hefting it up into her arms, looking very pleased with herself.

“Let’s go get that duck, then.”

Their walk down south of Clemens Point wasn’t difficult. The forest was overgrown, but not unmanageable, with more growth overhead than underfoot. Charles and Charlotte were both forced to duck and lift low-hanging branches out of their way, but June was short enough to just walk under them without one so much as smacking her hat off of her head.

Sunlight glimmered over the water bordering them to one side, running like silken ribbons of gold and peach over the surface. Flat Iron Lake, she remembered Dutch calling it. She’d seen it on a map, heard it said, but had only seen a muddy stretch of it up until just then.

June preferred the weather and the sights out West, where all it took was opening up the door to get dust on everything, where the land cracked rather than churned, where she could see clear across the flats to the next town over. Even the dust storms aroused some kind of reminiscing inside her. Didn’t matter how hard they were to clean up after. There was something about the humidity and all the green that set her on edge.

Men could sneak through trees like the ones around her, quiet as mice and with a deadly bite. That, and there was no such thing as a clean shot.

No such thing.

Charlotte took up humming halfway there. Her tune followed the temp of her steps, somehow careful and chipper at the same time. There was no telling if she was following some song June had no way of knowing, but it gave everyone something to listen to aside from the crunch of their boots and snap of dry twigs.

“You been painting long?” Juniper asked.

Her question put a momentary end to the humming.

Charlotte stepped beneath a branch Charles used his forearm to lift above their heads. A smile flickered across her face before growing, her pink cheeks ripening to the color of strawberries. “I’ve been painting since I was fourteen, so… ten years now.”

“Ten years.” June made a quiet, impressed sound in her throat. “I haven’t even been shootin’ for ten years. You, Charles?”

“Unfortunately.”

Things got quiet again after that right quick and in a hurry. Charles didn’t talk about his past much, especially not with people he wasn’t real close to. Even Charlotte knew better than to push for an explanation or just keep humming. They walked together in the silence that tailed them, and it was companionable enough to not feel entirely too awkward.

They arrived at another clearing not far off — an arch of land curled around an inlet, where the sun shone down onto the muddy ground brightly enough as to make it look almost inviting.

Off to one side, raised above the dirt and the mud and the almost opaque water close to the shore, there was a bunch of boulders, arranged almost like a table and chairs. They were just a little lopsided, but they’d make for decent seats once the duck hunting was over and done with.

Juniper wandered over to the shore, not quite far enough to hit mud. She’d have to tread water for the damn duck, but until then, she kept her boots and the legs of her jeans dry.

“Are there any ducks today?” Charlotte asked as she situated her paintbox on one of the boulders and turned to look out over the water. She lifted a hand above her eyes to keep the sun out of them. Some other lady might have brought a parasol, but with her arms full of painting supplies, she wouldn’t have been able to carry one. Not that she had one with her to begin with. “It really would be just my luck if we came this way only to find that they’ve all flown off.”

Both Charles and June took to squinting at the surface of the lake. In front of them, the water was undisturbed, but down to the left, farther still from the camp and even a ways from their little inlet, she saw a few somethings floating in a group.

Lifting her rifle up into her arms, Juniper did her best to keep herself loose, to keep her body from tensing up too much when the stiffness of her bicep set in. Her fingers unfurled against the body of her rifle, and she shook them out before finding a nest against the trigger. Victor was going to give her hell when she got back to camp, but she was walking the line of not caring.

Through her rifle’s sights, she was able to get the finer details of the flock.

“Yeah, those sure are ducks,” Juniper said, one eye squinted and the other trained on the water chickens. “You wantin’ any specific kind?”

Behind her, the sounds coming out of Charlotte were stuttered little confused things.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Pulling her rifle away, she twisted towards her with a grin. She kept forgetting that Charlotte wasn’t just a city girl, but a sheltered English lady. “You didn’t know there was different kinds of ducks, did ya?”

Charles’s laugh ended just as quick as it started.

“Them over there are called wigeons.”

“Pigeons?”

Juniper bit down sharply on her cheek to keep from snorting. “Nah. Starts with a double-u. _Wigeons_.”

Charlotte rushed forward, stopping just short of the mud as Juniper did. Momentum kicked up the hem of her skirt, billowing it outward before sweeping back to join her legs. “What do they look like?” She hitched herself up onto her tip toes and craned her neck to look, but she had no chance. They were too far away. “May I look through your rifle?”

Nobody touched June’s rifle but her.

It was the first thing she bought on her own, long before she stole her own dowry to purchase the land and the timber to build her ranch. There was nothing more precious to her in all the world, save maybe her place in the gang.

Save maybe Hosea.

“Sure,” Juniper murmured. She prodded her finger in the direction of the rifle’s underside. “Just be careful not to touch the trigger.”

Charlotte gave a firm nod and took the rifle in-hand, pulling it up against her chest as she’d seen Juniper do once or twice. She leaned her head down, one chocolate-colored curl falling over the stock. She squinted her eye, tracking as slowly as she could manage over the water, and only did a little shaking as she held a gun like that for the first time.

Once she landed on the ducks, she stopped and sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, they’re adorable!” Charlotte passed Juniper her rolling block in a quick, decisive motion. She could tell that she wasn’t going to like what Charlotte said next. “I can’t have you kill one of those.”

“What?”

“Charlotte.” Charles stepped up beside June. “You need the duck for your painting.”

There was no question in his voice. She needed the duck.

“Well, yes, but…”

June saw a spark of tension in the young woman’s jaw, a flicker of muscle underneath her flushed skin. She saw the line of her shoulders go stiff and her arms fold over her chest. She saw her reconsider.

Then, she blew out an unhappy, “Fine.”

Juniper’s brows shot up on her freckled forehead.

“And thank you,” Charlotte offered, apology written all over her features.

Bless her heart, but sometimes, she was as bull-headed as she was earnest. Sweet and thorny, all at the same time. Dutch had his hands full with a girl like her. They all did. One day, she’d show all of her true colors, and they’d be in for a showing.

Juniper pursed her lips, settling her rifle in her arms and glancing off towards the flock. “So, I can… kill the duck? That was you givin’ me permission?”

Charlotte ducked her head with a laugh that bordered upon winsome. “Yes.”

Just as before, Juniper did her damnedest to line up that shot. She knew where to hit a duck. She knew how they flew, how they reacted to the sound of a shot. She had one chance, maybe two, to get Charlotte her duck. And that was only if her arm held out after the first.

“You got it?”

Charles stood behind her. She could smell the campfire on his clothes.

“Yeah, I got it.”

Her forefinger hovered over the trigger before slowly pulling it back, feeling the rifle’s mechanisms tense and turn under the pressure. Then, the explosion of sound — her rifle, booming like thunder over the lake; the ducks, taking flight in a cavalcade of high-pitched squeaks rather than quacks. She’d been right; those were definitely wigeons.

She’d gotten one of them. Its body floated above the water, feathers keeping it from sliding right down to the depths of the lake.

Any amount of pride that was primed to surge inside of Juniper’s chest came to a screeching halt when Charlotte opened her mouth, voice quiet, and asked: “How are we going to get it?”

Both Charlotte and Juniper heard the rustling before they got any kind of verbal response.

Charlotte got wind of what was happening even before she did, if her sudden, “Oh my!” was any indication.

When June finally turned around, she was greeted with the sight of Charles Smith stripped down to his trousers, bent in half and removing his boots. He slung his socks over them, toes curling against the grass, before straightening back up. His torso was covered with tight black curls and plenty of scars, some puckered and others healed in dark slashes.

The sun turned his skin almost golden in the light, though his cheeks darkened when he realized they were staring at him, turning a ruddy red against falls of dark hair.

“I’ll get the body,” he murmured before giving both of them a wide berth.

Juniper caught sight of Charlotte rubbing fiercely at her own cheek, so hard you’d think the lace on her sleeve would’ve burned. But she didn’t ask any questions. Nobody asked her about Hosea, so the least she could do was give the girl time to figure out how she felt on her own time.

Didn’t matter how obvious it was.

“What made you wanna paint a duck?” June asked instead, slinging her rifle back over her left shoulder. “You don’t seem to have much of an interest in huntin’.”

“Hm?”

June finally let herself snort out a laugh. “Why a duck?”

“Oh!” Charlotte’s hands fell down in front of her, fingers curling together as she stared out at the water. “There are so many of them out here, and I’m awful at painting people. I thought, perhaps, drawing wildlife would be a decent first step.”

That didn’t make a lick of sense to Juniper. How could you go from drawing ducks to drawing people?

Unless you specialized in folks with pointy faces and a bunch of feathers, you’d always be shit out of luck when it came right down to it.

“Sure.”

Charles was a powerful swimmer and quick besides. They stood right on the shore and watched as Charles’s head and shoulders sliced through the water like he was riding on the front of a steamboat. He got to the duck, grabbed it, and headed back in their direction in what she assumed must’ve been record time. There was just something magical about watching him succeed in just about everything he did.

“Wigeons is brown ducks,” Juniper told her, gesturing for Charlotte to move over to her supplies and her mostly-blank canvas. “You got brown paints?”

“I can mix them.” In a puff of skirts, Charlotte sat herself down on the flattest of the boulders and opened up her the lid of her paintbox. In just a few days, the clean interior of the box was long gone, replaced with smudges of pigment and lines of dried paints. Just like her dress. Her palette was clean for the most part, but already stained. There was no getting that amount of color out, no matter your scrubbing. “A bit of crimson and green oxide would make the perfect color for the feathers around its head, I think.”

Charlotte looked up at Juniper. In the light of the sun, her brown eyes turned almost molten despite her squinting.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Thank you for helping, as well. With the wigeon.”

Juniper couldn’t help but grin at that. The girl was learning as she lived. That was all anyone could ask of her in a situation like this. It was all anyone could expect.

Once they heard Charles’s approach to the shore, Charlotte’s eyes snapped in his direction. Juniper followed out of nothing more than idle curiosity.

Water poured from his shoulders in rivulets as he lifted himself out of the lake. It trickled down from the ends of his hair and stuck the fabric of his trousers close to his thighs. There was no hiding anything against a foe like water. Not that Charles seemed particularly keen on hiding anything, not with Charlotte staring at him like she’d seen the second coming of Jesus Christ himself.

To Charlotte’s credit, she didn’t even seem to notice the duck hanging from Charles’s hand, dripping pink droplets rather than clear ones.

June almost felt wrong for interrupting.

“Well, you’ve got your duck.” Shifting the strap of her rifle on her shoulder, she shot Charles a _look_ not unlike the one he’d given her earlier. She knew when a man was about to start applying his wiles. She’d worked with Hosea for years, after all. “I’m gonna just head on back to camp now.”

But before she did, Charlotte reached out and curled her fingers into her sleeve.

“Do you not want to stay behind and watch me paint? To… see what comes of that shot of yours?”

Juniper’s laugh was a sweet burr at the back of her throat.

“I’ll see it when it’s done, sweetheart.” She clapped Charlotte on her shoulder and took her first step out of the clearing. “And I wager I’ll get a taste of that meat later on, too.”

Giving the two of them a little privacy wasn’t something that hurt June none.

Going back to camp and not doing nothing but chewing on an apology to the doctor was what stung. But she’d be out there again soon enough. She’d be out there, and she’d remember what it was like to be truly useful.


	18. Charlotte VI.

 Out some distance from Clemens Point, there was a barn.

The building stood out on the horizon — stark and large, painted bright red against the faded watercolors around it in every direction. There was no missing the structure, even on the back of a horse, even riding quicker than she had since they rode out of Valentine all those weeks before.

Charlotte clung to Charles’s back, her fingers dug deep into the threadbare shirt he wore beneath his vest.

Beside them, Madelaine rode with Sean in a dust cloud of skirts and a blonde braid.

They made for a strange party.

But that day, they weren’t just riding for the fun of it. They rode to a specific location — the barn — for a specific purpose — to learn how to shoot. In Taima and Ennis’s saddlebags, they carried washed out tin cans, discarded bottles, and ammunition enough to put a dent into all of them and then some. They had to account for all the missing, after all. Neither Charlotte nor Madelaine had any previous experience with guns like the ones they brought with them or borrowed.

Charlotte pressed her lips together as they launched over a low hill and Taima’s front hooves kicked up a puff of orange smoke. Wind wicked it away from their faces, leaving remnants clinging to the fabric of their trousers, and she sucked in a sharp breath, holding onto him a little more tightly.

“We aren’t far now,” Charles told her, voice raised above the beat of horses’s hooves and the sharp whistle of air over her ears. “See that barn over here?”

He pointed towards a red square right in front of them, fringed with fading white and sitting only a short ways away from a gently curving line of train tracks. The square grew and grew, and as it grew, details grew into focus. The barn’s massive doors were open, but the location itself seemed abandoned. There were no cows or sheep, no chickens, no farmhands milling this way or that. The barn was beautiful and empty, an echo of the image Charlotte had painted of America in her mind as she crossed the Atlantic.

“I hope dere’s nobody waitin’ on us,” Sean said, shooting a look back at Charles over his shoulder. “Maybe somebody who’ll get a bit funny ‘bout us blowin’ holes in dere barn?”

“There’s no one home.”

Charles sounded sure of himself, but that also seemed to be the way he always spoke. Charlotte never heard him sound anything but solid.

“Three times now, I’ve scouted the barn. No one is ever there.” He stroked a hand over Taima’s neck. The horse slowed a little, moving more carefully around a fence fallen into disrepair. “No hay, no equipment. Just an empty barn.”

“If you say so!”

And just like that, Charles’s even temperament was paired with the bombastic Sean MacGuire. He put his heel into Ennis’s side, and the horse pushed off into a gallop, hurling itself over the second fence and into a field of overgrown pea plants. Madelaine cried out and flung her arms around his waist, but above that, she still heard Sean give a raucous laugh.

Charles gritted his teeth. His fingers remained loose around Taima’s reins, but the muscles in his shoulders and back went taut, as if he wanted nothing more than to chase him down, to show him how foolish he was being.

“I’ve gotten better at this,” Charlotte offered. “You could give chase… if you wanted.”

The following moment was full of him considering her offer. In the end, the tension in his shoulders eased and he settled in Taima’s saddle rather than pushing her any harder. He knew that beating Sean to the barn was an impossibility once he had such an impressive lead, even with how fleet-footed his mare could be. So, he wove gently through those same pea plants rather than trampling them, not that they were bound to be anyone’s dinner.

“This is decent farmland. Shame to see it go to waste.” Charles plucked up one of the plants in passing, splitting the pod apart and revealing six perfectly round peas. He thumbed one of them into his mouth, chewing slowly before swallowing with a grunt. “Maybe that’s why.”

“Is there something wrong with them?” Charlotte asked, peering over his shoulder at the opened pod. “They seem… normal.”

Charles gave his head a slow shake. “Bland,” he murmured. “The taste is off.”

“May I try?”

He offered her one of the peas, and she took it, pressing the morsel into her mouth with something of an open mind. She preferred her vegetables cooked, or even tinned. The strong vegetal flavor of fresh produce set her teeth on edge. Still, she wanted to try, even after watching Charles choke one of them back.

Charlotte chewed… and spat it out with a quiet, “Blegh.”

The laugh Charles gave was surprisingly bright and most certainly warmer than the sun beating down on them from above. Crow’s feet cropped up at the corners of his eyes, and in them, Charlotte saw an unmistakable sparkle.

Well, at least he seemed to find her charming.

“Not one for vegetables?” Charles asked her as he guided Taima out into the clearing where Madelaine and Sean stood, the former crushing the latter’s hat in a mean grip. “Does nothing grow in England?”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose at him, but smiled.

“Of course things grow in England. How else would we eat?”

“Poorly,” Charles said.

Taima slowed to a stop, and Charles turned on her saddle, tucking his hands beneath Charlotte’s arms and helping her as she stepped down from the horse. It was easier than it had been, but Taima wasn’t as large as Brown Jack. She feared she would never climb down gracefully from the back of a war horse. Taima was much more manageable.

The ground was tough beneath her boots, not springy and soft as she expected. She patted the sole down against the sun-baked soil before glancing around the yard of long-dried mud that led right up to the fences that barely contained the overgrown crops. There were lines etched into the ground — deep wheelbarrow tracks that hadn’t been washed away by rains. It was incredible to see, like finding bones and arrowheads in the dirt. Every track was a memory, a remnant of life that had since moved on.

And, beyond that, Sean and Madelaine, standing face-to-face and eye-to-eye with not an inch of difference between their heights.

“—wanna see you do dat again, ya hear!?”

“Fine!” Sean blew out a frustrated sigh. “Lord above, woman! Hand over me hat!”

Snatching his bowler hat from Madelaine’s grip, he punched out the crushed top before settling it on his head. He pinched his lips together, twisted to the side to keep from smiling, and he ducked nimbly away when she reached out again, quick as lightning, to grab it again.

“I’m not teachin’ this harpy how ta shoot!” Sean cried out, his flair for the dramatic circling towards Charles rather than staying engaged with the furious Southerner. “You put a gun in her hand right now, and I’ll be pickin’ me balls up off of the ground! And that’s only if she doesn’t blow anyting else to smithereens when she misses!”

Neither Charles nor Charlotte warned him when Madelaine turned in his direction and ran forward, swinging just hard enough to knock his hat right off of his head and into the dusty dirt at his feet.

What they did do was laugh.

Charlotte leaned down and picked up Sean’s hat, smacking the velvety texture with her hands and watching the dirt fly off in tiny puffs.

“Here you are,” she said with a tiny smile before looking to Madelaine over his shoulder. “You should ride with Charles when we head back to camp. I can’t imagine riding side-saddle like that.”

“I wasn’t planning on bucking her off!” The defensiveness in Sean’s tone made his voice skitter out of his throat like a whine. He set his hat on top of his head again and slid one of the pistols from his gun belt. “Ugh. There’s just no winning. Let’s get ta shooting, shall we?”

Riding on his left hip was his own pistol, but on his right was the revolver Charles brought back to her from her home in Valentine, all shining silver and an ivory grip.

There were only a few men in the Van der Linde gang who carried such fancy pistols — Dutch, Hosea, and Micah Bell.

Now, Madelaine had one, too.

The pistol Charlotte planned on learning with was of a much simpler design. It was one of Charles’s — silver and brown, with a thick wood grain and a long barrel. He preferred using his bow and his rifle, but he was a decent enough shot with a pistol and offered his help when asked. He hadn’t hesitated when Dutch brought the opportunity forth. Sean hadn’t, either.

Considering all that was happening with Hosea and Madelaine and the Braithwaites, he likely saw this as a chance to get in on the action. Charlotte couldn’t deny that she was the slightest bit curious herself.

“Where are we setting up the targets?” Charlotte asked, stepping up to Taima and opening one of the saddlebags. Inside, the bottles were intact. There was a reason why Charles packed the bottles while Sean had been given the washed out tins. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Spread them out.” Charles lifted the bottles from the other saddlebag into his arms, going over to one of the fences and setting one on a weathered wooden post and another on the ground just a few feet away. Charlotte picked up a few bottles of her own and did the same on the fence on the opposite side of the yard. “Learning to shoot in a straight line isn’t helpful to anyone in a fight.”

Sean let go of a low, almost inherently critical whistle. “Ya, but if they can’t shoot in the first place… why make it harder?”

“They will learn.”

Charles’s faith in both her and Madelaine churned up all manner of warmth in her chest. That warmth didn’t make the powerful heat of the sun any easier to bear, not that she would trade that belief for anything cooler.

Behind her, she heard both Sean and Madelaine rifling through Ennis’s saddlebags. They set about lining the side of the barn with Pearson’s old cans — some stacked on half-rotten boxes, some placed on the uneven ground at different distances.

It didn’t take them long to set out every single one of the bottles and tin cans.

Sean and Charles let Ennis and Taima off to graze. Both horses were barely tall enough to be seen over the pea plants that stretched out in every direction, but there was trust there, too.

“Everyone, in the middle.”

In the very center of the yard, the four of them stood in pairs. Sean stood at Madelaine’s back, and behind Charlotte, Charles stood as firm as an oak tree, his roots far underground. The pistols were pushed into the hands of the women — one for each of them, already loaded.

Whether it was anticipation or anxiety humming in Charlotte’s chest like an engine, Charlotte didn’t know.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. The feeling went quiet.

So, it had been anxiety.

“Charlotte first.” Charles’s voice was low and quiet and close behind her. “Aim.”

Charlotte lifted the pistol, holding it in one hand and supporting it with the other as she’d seen done many times before. More than anything, she worried about the kick of the weapon when she finally squeezed the trigger. She worried that she would drop the pistol into the dirt, or that she would slam her elbow back into Charles’s chest.

But she needed to learn. She _needed_ to know how to aim, how to fire, how to reload. Only then could she protect herself without requiring someone else to struggle and bleed and likely die for her.

The bottle she trained her sights on stood high on one of the posts, its brown glass nearly opaque against the shifting leaves of a pea plant. She sucked in a slow breath before releasing it just as slowly. With the exhale, the gentle bob of her arms slowed.

Stopped.

Charlotte squeezed the trigger. With the explosion of a shot, the gun snapped back. Not far enough to slam into her shoulder, but almost. The bullet slammed into the post rather than the bottle, kicking up a spray of grayed splinters.

The bottle on top of the post wobbled before falling to the ground and shattering on impact.

Silence, for a moment, and then, an almost hopeful, “Does that count?”

“If you were aiming at his head, you would have shot him in his stomach,” Charles said, his hand still light on her shoulder. “You would have killed him.”

Charlotte swallowed hard enough for her throat to scratch. _It was just a bottle_ , she told herself. _You didn’t kill anyone_. But then, quietly, another voice rose at the back of her mind with an unhelpful whisper of, _You will. One day, you’ll have to_.

She swallowed again and forced herself to ease the tension in her upper arms.

Both she and Charles glanced in Madelaine’s direction. Sean stood at her side, relaying all manner of directions to her in a way that Charles had so recently avoided doing. He had her lift her arms, had her keep them tight and steady. He had her put her feet apart on the ground. He even touched her back to coax her into taking a deep breath.

“Now, ya got the can in sight, do ya?”

Madelaine’s pointed chin gave a quick bob, her lips pressed into a thin and determined line. Sunlight gleamed over the silver of her revolver’s frame, glinting like gold in a shallow stream, and everything grew silent again as she prepared to take her first shot.

Prepared, hesitated, then…

The revolver was louder than Charlotte’s pistol, with a sound so sharp and sudden that she nearly squealed out of surprise. That same anticipation as before had knotted her up too tightly. Everything unraveled with the blast, leaving Charlotte panting and holding her palm flat against her chest. Her heartbeat raced in her ears, pounding against them like a drum.

And Madelaine.

They watched as her shot went high, ripping through pea plants rather than impacting the can at all. The stance Sean nudged her into had been a little too stiff, as well, leaving her red-faced and rubbing at her bicep beneath the checkered fabric of her sleeve.

“Relax,” Charles said, as if there was no instruction simpler. “Here, watch Charlotte.”

When Charles, Madelaine, and Sean all looked to her, Charlotte’s already racing heart fumbled in her chest. Never before had she been in a situation quite like this one, where her incomplete knowledge of a task brought her under the attention of others looking for guidance. She was always the student. Even in this, she learned from Charles, but found herself a few steps before Madelaine.

Rubbing at her flushed cheek with her left hand, she let off some of the pressure with a laugh.

“I’m sure that Sean’s instructions work for him,” Charlotte began as diplomatically as possible. Sean wrinkled his nose, displeased and not saying anything. Not with Charles watching. “I find that remaining loose and standing how I always do helped me very much.”

Charlotte chose the can Madelaine had attempted to hit and readied herself, aiming her pistol once it was cocked in the same direction. It was shorter than the bottle, but thicker around, just as shiny in the midday sun as Madelaine’s revolver.

“I kept my arms loose,” she murmured, more for her sake than Madelaine’s as she recalled her stance from mere moments before. “I kept myself steady, but not stiff.”

The barrel of her pistol rose, tracking an uneven but steady path up the length of the post.

“Then, I positioned the bottle directly above the tip of the gun. Once I was convinced that I would surely land my shot, I squeezed the trigger.” She paused, letting go of another slow, deliberate breath. “And I missed. So, this time I’m trying something a little different.”

Charlotte hitched the pistol up just a hair, and the second she did, she squeezed the trigger.

She held firm against the kick of the weapon, letting her arms soak up most of the pressure, and stared agape as the can flew from the post with a crack. Where it landed, she had no way of knowing. Somewhere in the Carolinas, she assumed.

Her eyes snapped over to Charles only to find that he was smiling, lips twisted at the very corners. The bright light of the sun made his eyes dance as he moved forward to help Madelaine follow the instructions she’d given. They looked prettier than any kind of silver plating.

“Good job,” he said as he passed behind her.

Never in her life had she been a teacher as well as a student, and never in her life had she felt so very sure of herself, so confident, so _proud_.

Their lessons lasted for the better part of two hours. Some cans rocketed off into the fields, while some remained untouched. Some bottles exploded into shards of brown glass, while some stood still, as if they were bulletproof. When they ran out of bottles and cans, they turned towards the barn. Charles fetched his tomahawk from Taima’s saddlebags and marked panels of red wood for them to aim at instead. Whoever hit closer to the hastily etched ‘x’ was able to sit out for a round, to rest in the blistering Lemoyne heat.

Charlotte made sure to hit them. Even after living in Saint Denis for a time, she wasn’t accustomed to the heat and humidity. She removed her hat and used the brim to fan herself. There was no cooling off when even the drink they carried was warmed by the sun.

The old, termite-bitten wooden posts didn’t afford much shade, but desperation led to accepting the mediocre. Thumbing open the collar of her blouse, Charlotte stretched her legs out in the dirt, not caring about the state of herself for the first time in a very long time. Only when Charles looked over at her did she feel aware of how she must look — red-cheeked, her braid disheveled with loose hairs stuck to her neck in sweaty whorls.

“We should head out soon,” he offered in her direction, though he likely spoke to Sean.

Sean, who had taken out his own pistol and begun practicing alongside them. He hit the mark one out of three times, while Madelaine and Charlotte hit them one out of four.

“Aye.” Sean knocked the brim of his bowler hat back over his freckled brow. Everyone was just as sweaty as she was. That was a comforting enough fact, though it didn’t make her desire for a cool swim any less powerful. “We’re near on runnin’ out of bullets.”

Madelaine looked over at him from behind the curve of her shoulder, brow quirked.

“And whose fault is that?”

“Yer missin’ more than I am!” Sean gestured towards the barn with his dominant hand, pistol still held in his grip. “There ain’t anyting wrong with tryin’ ta improve.”

The huff Madelaine gave made her look more of a refined lady than she ever had, her long nose tilting upward as she looked back at the second to last panel Charles had marked. Before then, Charlotte hadn’t realized how like Molly O’Shea she could be. There was much separating them — her hard-working nature, her sometimes low-brow sense of humor.

Honestly, it was as if Madelaine was half-Molly, half-Grimshaw.

Which… made a certain amount of sense, given what was happening back at the camp.

To Madelaine’s credit, she hit the following shot.

Sean let out an ear-splitting whistle and a cheer. The celebration was almost more than enough for a single shot, but true to his nature, he removed his hat and slapped it down onto Madelaine’s head, leaving her looking less impressed by her own success.

She opened her mouth, primed to give him a fair bit of lip, but something caught her off her guard.

That something rustled through the pea plants in the opposite direction of Taima and Ennis. The sound pushed Charlotte up from the ground. Despite the ache in her back from how she’d been sitting, she bolted for Charles, stepping up behind him as he tucked his tomahawk into his belt and reached instead for his pistol.

Through the half-broken gate emerged four horses, with five riders. Each of them was clad in pale blue linen and faded shades of black. Two of them wore lopsided forage caps, just as bleached with time as the rest of their uniforms.

Three of the men looked too young to be veterans. Their fire was newer, kindled by privilege rather than from clinging to an aged design. The two who rode out in front wore time on their faces, as well as hate. Both things marked them just as unkindly in their overgrown brows and the blank look in their eyes.

There were no introductions. Charlotte hadn’t expected any.

“Whatch’y’all folk doin’ out here?” One of the old men pushed his horse out in front of the others. It was a tremendous creature with a ratty brown mane and piercing blue eyes. In the sun, its coat shimmered between gray and brown and rusty red. If it belonged to anyone else, it might have been beautiful.

“Nothing,” Charles said. Unflinching. Braver than anyone she knew. “Minding our business.”

The man leaned forward, elbows on his saddle’s horn. The leather of his loose gun belt was worn pale, but the pistols he carried were mismatched and mean. Strapped to his saddle was a rifle. Each of the men carried enough fire to burn the abandoned farm to ash.

“’Nothin’,’ he says!” His mouth curled sharply downward in a strained laugh. “When he’s blowin’ holes in the side of our damn barn!”

Sean stepped up beside Charles. “This ain’t yer barn!”

The man straightened himself out, though there was a stoop in his shoulders that didn’t ease. He slammed the heel of his palm down onto the horn of his saddle. “This whole land is ours, boy!”

Just behind him, the second veteran pushed up to the front. Their horses snorted and stamped their feet against the dried out dirt beneath them.

“There’s only two of ‘em,” he said, and the first man gave a snort of a laugh, turning his eyes on Charlotte and Madelaine. “Jus’ two, tryin’ to be four. We got five.”

One of the younger ones spoke up at that.

“The land here’s dry, pa,” he said, his grin sharp as the edge of Charles’s tomahawk. “Could use a little blood.”

Just as soon as those words left the young man’s mouth, Charles loosed his tomahawk from his belt without any of them catching wind of what was happening. He reared back and hurled it at him. The blade buried into the young one’s chest, just far enough right to send out a spray of red onto his shirt of faded blue.

The momentum tore the man from his horse. He crumpled against the hard ground without so much as a shout of pain.

It was the old man who bellowed, half-rage and half-grief, wheeling around on Charles with a fire that spit into something wild and unable to be tamed.

“The barn!” Charles shouted. He twisted around and snapped his pistol up high, clipping the second of the veterans in the shoulder before he could get off a blast of his shotgun. “Get to the barn!”

Madelaine whirled in a flurry of checkered skirt and reached for Charlotte’s wrist. Fear made her powerful. She snapped her forward, despite their differences in size, and rushed in the direction of the barn’s opened doors. A bullet whizzed past her head, forcing her to drop and stumble forward, knees thumping against the pressed dirt.

“Come on!” Charlotte sought out Madelaine’s shoulders with both hands. She hefted her up onto her feet, and they ducked as quickly as they could manage inside of the barn. “Oh, god!”

They crowded behind a few bales of old hay, dried out and stinking. Crouching into that position left her thighs aching well into her hips, but she stood true, one arm slung around Madelaine’s waist.

Outside, there were gunshots. Gunshots, and the screaming of horses. Pained cries.

Shouts, with words so hurried Charlotte couldn’t quite make them out.

Madelaine fumbled with the revolver in her hands. Tremors overtook her, leaving her shaking so powerfully that even a comforting squeeze from Charlotte didn’t manage to make them go still. Fear made her quick, made her fast. Fear also left her with tears curling down her cheeks, tracking through orange dust from the road like sweat.

“I wanna help.” Madelaine’s voice weakened at its edges. She wilted before letting the revolver droop against her lap. “Good lord, I’m so damned useless!”

“No.”

Charlotte reached up to Madelaine’s face, grabbing hold of her flushed and wet cheeks, staring into her faded blue eyes.

“You aren’t useless. You’re afraid.” She thumbed beneath one of her eyes, wiping away one of many tears. “Everyone is afraid.”

“Can you? Help them, I mean.”

Charlotte flicked her attention towards the open doors. She saw nothing but green and blue — pea plants, and a clear sky. The Lemoyne Raiders hadn’t finished the fight. They hadn’t found them. For now, they were safe, and it was possible that Sean and Charles could use help.

Her pistol lay on the ground by her feet.

She reached for it and stood, hurrying as quickly and as carefully as she could towards the weathered red door. Her heart had far surpassed racing. With every new beat, it flew.

Peeking out from behind the door, she caught a flash of ginger hair from behind a horse as Sean pulled the old Confederate down from his horse. His pistol rang out only a moment later, kicking up a spray of red as the bullet buried itself into the man’s forehead. And Charles — she couldn’t see Charles, but two young riders were visible above the pea plants, one alive and one dead.

The latter drooped in his saddle as his horse bucked to free itself, while the other whipped himself in one direction and then the next, looking for someone rather than calming his mount.

For Charles, maybe.

Charlotte’s breath hitched in her throat.

She lifted her pistol with both hands — one for squeezing, and one for support. That same breath skidded out of her, forcing her to take another in order to ease the bob of her arms. The horse was quick as it was wild, and after spending an afternoon shooting cans and bottles for practice, she knew she couldn’t hit him.

Or, rather, she couldn’t kill him.

_One day, you’ll have to_.

The thought echoed, unhelpful. It rang out like a shot from a gun. The sound was sharp enough to make her teeth ache and her heart stutter mid-flight. She stared out into the field, unblinking, waiting for an opportunity to do just that.

But she wouldn’t kill him. There was no guarantee that she would even graze him.

The young man whipped around. While he was searching the field for Charles, his eyes fell upon someone else in his frenzy. He stared at her, lips parted, a lock of ashen blond hair flicking above his forehead in the wind.

Charlotte eased the second breath out from between her teeth, steadying her pistol, and let a bullet fly.

Where the shot landed, she couldn’t be sure, but the young man was hurtled back, off of his horse and into the crops. The horse bolted forward in a gallop, loosening the other body somewhere between and freeing itself from the madness of the fight.

“Did ya shoot somebody?” Madelaine asked her as she stood up from her crouch. Her knees wobbled beneath her skirt, but she managed. She pulled herself up, braver following the onset of quiet. “What’s goin’ on out there?”

Charlotte’s shoulders bobbed in a shrug.

But then, like a whisper from an angel, a voice rose above the pea plants, piercing the quiet with relief.

“Everyone alright?” Deep, warm — Charles.

Madelaine slipped right past Charlotte and out into the sun, away from the musty barn and away from the fear. The sun turned her hair to gold as she sniffed and rubbed at her tear-stained cheeks. “We’re fine in here,” she said, the curved heels of her boots leaving square stamps on the dirt as she hurried over to Charles and Sean. “Charlotte shot a man.”

Emerging from the barn just in time to see Charles’s brow furrow in concern, Charlotte managed a small smile. “I’m fine.”

Sean threw open his arms, and surprisingly, Madelaine burrowed into them, looping her arms around his narrow waist and pressing her face into his shoulder for comfort rather than an attempt at avoiding all the mess spread out around them.

The blood, the bodies — there wasn’t any use in avoiding them. They had both seen worse.

“There’s a horse here,” Charles murmured as Charlotte crossed the yard to join them. The pretty gray-brown horse the veteran rode stood on the far side of the clearing, not looking at them… but not running, either. “Even-tempered. She doesn’t scare easy. I’ll bring her back to camp.”

Charlotte looked back at him. She wanted to smile, or at least, to thank him for protecting them. She found that she could do neither.

_Later_ , she assured herself.

When she didn’t respond, Charles reached out to her. She expected no more than a hand on her shoulder, but that wasn’t where he landed. Instead, he cupped her cheek, thumbing over the pudgy line of her jaw.

“You can ride her,” he clarified. “She’ll be a good fit.”

A gift, blood-stained though it might be.

Charlotte tilted into the rough skin of Charles’s palm and nodded. Later, she would thank him. Later, she would give him a smile to show how grateful she was. For the horse, for the lessons, for the gentle pressure of his touch that slowed her heart to a steady throb.

Later.


	19. Madelaine VII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologize for the late update! I've started working on my novel again (as well as getting caught up in Far Cry and watching Overwatch League), but I don't intend to abandon the fic! I might just be a little slower with the updates. ❤ Thank you for your patience!
> 
> Also, I'm **so** sorry for the slur in this chapter. The Braithwaites are awful. I don't approve of their word choice in the least, and wanted to put a little bit of a warning before the chapter so you can be prepared for one while reading.

The Braithwaites had something of an agreement with the Lemoyne Raiders.

Pushing moonshine wasn’t difficult in a state like Lemoyne, but it was made easier by men who knew whose throats were driest and who could more dearly use the sweet destruction of sobriety. They were an exploitative bunch, led by maniacs more than monsters, and Madelaine couldn’t help but feel some measure of pride when she got news of how thoroughly Dutch and the boys had screwed them over.

But now, sitting side-saddle on Silver Dollar with her arms wound around Hosea’s narrow waist, she wasn’t so sure about their next step. Gareth Braithwaite had what amounted to their names and where they’d be on a Sunday afternoon, riding out west of Southfield Flats.

He was Hosea Matthews, as always, but she…

She was Madeline Matthews, his beloved daughter. _Madlin_. Just saying it that way made her wrinkle her nose once or twice, but she’d gotten so used to repeating it over the last few days, she could almost make herself sound natural.

John got a kick out of that once he heard, which just made matters worse.

All around them, farmland met forest in a tangle of trees and abandoned corn fields. Wooden fences and telephone poles lined the roads going both ways and across, and there wasn’t much to see save for the occasional flight of birds or an ornery wild hog or two. Hosea didn’t have firepower enough to kill a boar, and they didn’t have room, neither. So, they simply watched them from Silver Dollar’s back as they made their leisurely way down south to Rhodes.

“I got a bad feeling about this, Hosea,” Madelaine murmured. He wore his clothes too close to his body for her to have anything to grip onto, leaving her to wring out her own hands over his stomach. “And I’ve almost got used to dealing wit’ those feelings. This one’s just… It’s real sharp.”

“That’s good.”

The dirt path broke off in two different directions, and that was where they slowed to a stop. Silver Dollar stepped from the road to the grass alongside it, head bowed and swinging heavily over the grass. Sniffing, rather than eating.

Before sliding down to the ground, however, Hosea twisted just enough to see her over his shoulder. “If you ever stop feeling that, you’ll have been in this business far too long.”

He waited for Madelaine to let herself off Silver Dollar’s back first, his hand finding one of hers in order to assist her with her balance. Once she was stable, he followed suit, hitching his horse to a nearby post.

“When did you stop feeling it?” Madelaine asked, fanning at the sweat dampened hair at the nape of her neck. There wasn’t so much as a cough of a breeze out there. Even something small as that would have been a blessing. The heat was just that much hotter without anything to move it around. “If you don’t mind me asking, at least.”

“Ah, no, I don’t mind.”

Busying himself with pulling an apple from Silver Dollar’s saddlebags, he considered her question, his furrowed brow sending papery wrinkles up over his forehead. He split the fruit in two with the blade of a knife at his belt before handing the horse one and taking the second for himself. When he took a bite, juice sprayed outward from the flesh.

“For a long time, those feelings didn’t matter much to Dutch and I, you see?” Hosea leaned an elbow on one of the fence’s crumbling posts. He chewed his bite of apple and swallowed hard, smiling to himself as he cast a wide look out over the fields. She wasn’t surprised at all by his fondness for reminiscing. “We helped folks rather than hurting them. We did _good_ things. Those ‘feelings’ you’re getting? They were there, but they were quiet.”

He took another bite of the apple before letting Silver Dollar have the rest, wiping his hand off on his trousers once the exchange was made.

“Paranoia is part of an outlaw’s usual cocktail,” Hosea said as he rubbed his tongue over his teeth to free a sliver of apple peel. “When it becomes the most potent part, _that_ is when you begin to worry.”

His soft blue eyes found hers.

For all their differences, Madelaine was seeing a lot of similarities in them. He made for a good father, though he looked and acted nothing like her own.

“Do you feel that you’re paranoid, Miss Madelaine?” His idle curiosity cracked into a grin, and he gave a tremulous laugh that broke into him clearing his throat midway through. “Excuse me. _Madlin_ , my darling daughter, do you feel as if you’re being paranoid?”

Madelaine rolled her eyes. “Not anymore. Now, I’m mostly just mad on account of the name.”

Hosea shot her a wink.

Gathering up the hem of her skirt, she joined him beside Silver Dollar and the collapsing fence. The night before, she’d spent hours with Grimshaw, learning everything she could about the man who was playing as her father as they ripped out the blood-stained buckram hem of her dress. She learned about Bessie, about his friendship with Dutch, about him being a father to most of them. It made sense that he would pretend to be hers, as well, on account of her own being dead and buried for years.

Warmth rose up the back of her neck, a different sort than the sun beat down on her. She dropped the skirt of her dress with a sigh and folded her arms under her chest.

After what happened with Charlotte and the others, she hadn’t been able to rest. She hadn’t been able to shoot, neither, even when Charles — and _Edwin_ , this time, rather than poor Sean — offered to take her down by the side of the lake rather than out anywhere dangerous. She didn’t want to hold her father’s gun, not until this was done. Then, she would take it up again. Privately.

“Madelaine…” Hosea’s voice pulled her out of her head. She looked to him, head tipped to the side. “Did Dutch talk to you about what happened when you were out with Miss Charlotte and the others?”

Her lips parted.

Trelawny was a magician, but Hosea could apparently read minds.

“Wh—?”

“I’ve noticed that you’ve been a fair bit quieter lately.” Hosea wound a gesture around one of his hands before letting go of a whistling sigh. “You seem to still be recovering from that mess.”

Dutch had spoken to her. That night, he found her sitting down by the docks rather than on them. No one trusted them enough to do anything by leave the boat there. He found her, and he spoke to her, and his hand slid into hers for a lingering moment that would have left her feeling as if she was standing on top of the world if she hadn’t hated herself so much.

‘There isn’t a single person in this world, Madelaine, who wears their bravery the same way,’ he told her. ‘You will find how you wear yours, and I am _convinced_ it will be an arresting sight.’

“He did,” Madelaine told him, and she told him little else.

Down the road a ways, she saw plumes of orange dust before she saw the horses. She straightened out her back and tugged at the folds of her skirt to be sure it was laying right. “That’s gotta be them. Looks like…” Holding her hand flat above her eyes, she squinted down towards the figures emerging from the wall of kicked up dirt. “Two riders.”

“Now, did Gareth Braithwaite bring a brother or a friend?” Hosea mused, halfway to himself as he smoothed a comforting hand over Silver Dollar’s withers. “Because, from the sound of things, it’s not gonna be both.”

Madelaine gave a bark of a laugh before working her jaw back and forth, tapping the tip of her tongue to her front teeth. She had practice in Valentine with masking her accent well enough, but with the Braithwaites, it had to be flawless. There weren’t many folks from Louisiana in Lemoyne. They kept to their roots, and a woman with a name so close to Madelaine and a thick accent from ways away would arouse some suspicion in anyone with sense.

Rather than banking on Gareth being an idiot, she would give acting her best shot.

Hosea pulled his shoulders back and gave his fine yellow vest a tug. He looked every inch like a salesman, which was just the role he intended on playing. Selling a man his own homemade liquor would be damn near impossible for anyone else. For Hosea, she reckoned it would be simple as swindling a blind man and much more satisfying.

“Now, remember to be a good girl,” he told her as the riders approached, close enough that they were more than blurs of color on the horizon. The wink Hosea tossed her way was nothing short of charming. “And follow my lead.”

Madelaine’s shoulders shook with a barely withheld laugh.

“You’re pushing your luck,” she told him, her voice pitched a little higher and a lot more delicate than her usual, “ _Paw_.”

Before Hosea could so much as give her a look, the riders were there, slowing down in a rush of snorting horses and sweaty men. The smell hit her long before their boots touched the ground — a cloud of barnyard and heavily applied perfume, tobacco, and a bright note of moonshine to tie it all together. It took everything she had not to wrinkle her nose as Hosea guided her over to be introduced to the two men.

They were both lean in build, though one was almost a head taller than the other. The tall one stepped forward first with a sort of self-importance that made her think _Braithwaite_ without so much as a flash of hesitation.

Gareth Braithwaite was all limbs and looked to be more gristle than flesh, with a clean-shaven jaw and a tuft of hair sitting pretty under his bottom lip like a deer’s tail. Beneath the broad brim of his hat, a pair of watery blue eyes stared out at her rather than at Hosea.

Worry pinned Madelaine there. Did he recognize her father in her? She’d never met him, not in the months her father worked on supplying his family. There was no way…

But then, Gareth’s eyes trailed down over her chest, over her waist, and down to the hem of her dress before roaming back up again, intimate as a lover.

“Thank you _very_ much for agreeing to meet with me, Mister Braithwaite.” Hosea stepped in front of Madelaine and reached out with one of his long-fingered hands, giving each of the men a good-natured grin. “I apologize for the strange locale, but…” He cast a look around. “Rhodes seemed to be a mighty unwelcoming place for your family.”

Gareth said nothing, but the man at his shoulder spat out a nasty, “Damned Grays,” along with a wad of tobacco and a string of yellowed spit.

If Madelaine’s stomach hadn’t already been turning, it would have started just then.

“You see, my daughter Madeline and I are new to Lemoyne,” Hosea continued. He wove their story between his fingers like strings of yarn, and he was better at weaving than any of the girls back at camp. By a long shot. “We’re traveling with a group of miners who’ve come down through Ambarino after an unfortunate accident.”

Gareth tilted his head. The wiry muscle in his neck stood out more clearly than before, along with a worrying lump beside his Adam’s apple.

“Whatchu want?” He spoke as if he was dragging his voice over hot coals — relentless, painful. Every few words, he stopped and sucked hard on his teeth, his thin cheeks buckling. “You done brought me out here. I heard you got somethin’ ta sell. So, whatchu want for it?”

“We do have something to—”

Madelaine stepped up beside Hosea and gave his sleeve a single tug. He looked to her, skin around his eyes tense, but rather than fighting her, he relented. She didn’t know if it was trust, or just him knowing he could salvage the situation if she tripped over herself. He didn’t have any reason to trust her with this, but…

You can’t learn to ride if you aren’t given the reins.

“We want to meet your mother,” Madelaine said, her pointed chin tilting sharply upwards to meet Gareth’s eyes. “We’d be happy to work with you, but we’d like to form a relationship with her, as well. For longevity’s sake, since we’re looking to remain in Lemoyne for some time.”

Again, Gareth was quiet, and it was his friend who spoke up.

“Didn’t know we got wild cats all the way out here,” he laughed, rubbing over his weak chin as he took a long look at her. “Catherine Braithwaite won’t like you, girl.”

“Perhaps not, but she might like my Paw.”

Gareth raised one of his hands, stopping his friend from jawing any more than he already had. There was a ring on his finger that glinted in the sunlight. Madelaine couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for any woman who might be married to a piece of trash like Gareth Braithwaite. That feeling was all but forgotten in her chest when he spoke up.

“Lemme get dis straight,” he said, body rolling forward a step on dust-covered boots. “You’ll give us what you’re sellin’ for a meeting with my mama?” When he cracked a smile, his teeth weren’t yellowed and crowded like his friend’s. They were strong, and white. “Don’t seem like much of a deal for ya. What’s the damn catch?”

Madelaine felt a hand on her shoulder. Plans change. Things get complicated.

She hadn’t failed.

“There is no catch,” Hosea said. “We have no allegiances here, and making friends seems about the only way to survive in a state like this one.”

All around them, there was nothing as far as anyone could see. The farmland nearby had been abandoned after a family was murdered right on their farm. With no trains passing through and no riders, they were alone. She could have stepped back and grabbed for Hosea’s holstered pistol and put a bullet into Gareth’s chest if she wanted to. She could have put one in his head, like his men did to her daddy. She could have shot up his friend, too, under that stretch of pure blue sky.

But she didn’t. Because that wasn’t the story they were planning on telling here, and she wanted to learn how to weave that yarn just as well as Hosea.

“Alright.”

Gareth tipped the brim of his hat back and stared down at the both of them, that same hand poised high on his waist as he settled back on the heels of his boots.

“Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “I can’t make up a meetin’ with mama any sooner than that. Bring up what yer sellin’ ta our manor house, and you can meet with her then.”

Hosea reached forward again and gave Gareth’s hand a firm shake. “We’ll be there.”

“I should hope so.”

And that was it.

Without so much as a sideways glance from Gareth or his friend, the two of them made an appointment to see the matriarch of the Braithwaite family. While Dutch, Arthur, and Bill endeared themselves to the Grays, they managed to do the very opposite. The Van der Linde gang was well and truly stuck between the two families, and they were playing both sides.

Madelaine and Hosea went to Silver Dollar’s side.

Rather than just climbing up, he reached over and rubbed a comforting path between her sweat-dampened shoulders.

“You did well,” he murmured. “I’m proud of you.”

No one had said such a thing to her for as long as she could remember. Those words didn’t fit the voice she remembered as belonging to her father. Even Mister Hughes had only ever thanked her. Pride seemed almost too intimate, too close to the chest.

Hosea’s lips twisted into a smile as he laid another pat on her back. “You go on up first.”

“I got one question ‘fore we leave.” Gareth Braithwaite’s teetering voice stopped her cold as she reached for the saddle’s horn to hoist herself up. She stilled and looked at him, blood turned to an icy slurry in her veins. He sat atop his horse, guiding the mare closer to Silver Dollar than either of the horses were comfortable with. “If ya don’t mind answerin’ it.”

Hosea cocked his head back, squinting up at him. “Of course. Anything.”

Leaning forward with his forearm poised on the horn of his saddle, Gareth looked down at Madelaine. Not Hosea, but Madelaine.

“Y’all travelin’ with an In’jun and an Irishman?”

Panic seized up in her throat, tightening the passage around the lump her heart made just there. Her fingers dropped from the saddle as she turned towards him. She tipped her head back and smiled up at him, her cheeks dimpling.

“Why… no, sir, we are not,” Madelaine told him without missing a beat. “Why do you ask?”

Gareth pulled himself up high in his saddle and rubbed at the nape of his neck. Sweat gleamed on his palm when he pulled his hand away. “A few of my associates were killed just a few days ago,” he explained as he wiped the soaked skin on the thigh of his jeans. “One of ‘em survived, said he got shot by one of the two ladies was travelin’ with thems that killed the rest.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Hosea said, his condolences offered. “I hope the man recovers.”

The conversation was over in his eyes, but the same couldn’t be said for the Braithwaite boy.

“One of those ladies was blonde,” Gareth continued. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and his horse moved over even closer to them, tossing her head, unwilling but obedient. “Blonde and tall, with a body like yours. Blue dress, too.”

_Oh, good God_. Madelaine’s heart raced in her chest, making blood pound in her ears. _Oh, Lord, he knows._

“I have a green dress, too, sir, and a pink one. Paw bought me a cream one in Valentine.” She dusted her fingers over the checkered fabric, sending the new hem out in a pristine arc. No blood stains, clean enough that it looked to be right off a mannequin’s back. “There are plenty of blonde girls out there with blue dresses.”

Hosea climbed up onto Silver Dollar’s back and extended an arm to help Madelaine up behind him.

Once they were both settled, he tipped his hat to Gareth and to his friend. “It was a pleasure meeting with the both of you. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.”

And then, they were off.

Hosea pushed Silver Dollar at just quick enough of a pace to get them where they were going, but not arouse anymore suspicions within Gareth Braithwaite’s heart of hearts. They would get to camp before long. Time didn’t matter. Not getting shot in the back did.

Once they were far enough away to not be heard or even seen, Madelaine finally let herself breathe.

Her shoulders sank forward, and her arms scooped around Hosea’s skinny waist.

“Do you think they believe us?” Madelaine cleared her throat, giving her head a weak shake. “Oh, Lord, they’ve gotta know. You saw the way that Braithwaite was lookin’ at me?”

“He may think that we’re murderers, yes, but… at least he doesn’t know who you are.”

She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t even considered it.

“Oh,” Madelaine whispered. Her fingers curled into Hosea’s vest, relief mixing with the thick liquor of anxiety that still sat in her blood. It made her feel strange, like she was floating with a bellyful of lead. “Better to be travelin’ with a buncha killer’s than my daddy’s daughter, I guess.”

Hosea’s laugh was bright.

The sound stirred up Silver Dollar something fierce, pushing him off into a gallop rather than a trot, leaving the meeting and the fear and Gareth Braithwaite behind for a few days.


End file.
